We Do Not Part by Han Kang

Nobel Prize winner for Literature, South Korean author Han Kang demonstrates why she was a worthy winner for that award in her latest book. We Do Not Part was published in Korean in 2021 and is also the most recent of Han Kang’s books to be translated into English (by E Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris. A kind of companion piece to Human Acts, Han’s novel about the Gwangju Uprising in 1980, We Do Not Part stands witness to the massacre of civilians on the island of Jeju in the years following World War 2 and the ongoing impact of those events.

We Do Not Part is primarily narrated by Kyungha, a stand in for the author, who is still struggling after writing about another massacre. Kyungha has had a disturbing dream and had planned, with the help of her old friend and colleague Inseon, to recreate the vision of that dream in reality. But before any of that can come to fruition she is called to a hospital in Seoul where she finds Inseon recovering from a serious woodworking accident. Inseon asks Kyungha to go immediately to her house in a remote area of Jeju Island to feed her pet bird, who was left alone in the rush and will die without food and water. Kyungha’s journey, through snow and ice will be traumatic, but more so are the revelations that follow.

We Do Not Part is very much a novel in two parts. The first follows Kyungha’s harrowing journey through a blizzard to find Inseon’s house, hinting as she goes at the revelations to come. This section has some surreal and dreamlike qualities as Kyungha battles against the elements and darkness to find her way. The second half of the novel has the feel of a ghost story and it is hard to know what is real and what Kyungha is imagining or experiencing. Memories of the massacre of civilians in Jeju in the name of a supposed fight against communism, are revealed to Kyungha through a series of testimonies and documents. In particular in this section, there is a focus on Inseon’s family – both sides of which were affected by these events.

We Do Not Part is both beautiful and harrowing, the translation capturing Han’s poetic imagery. Han Kang uses the persistent snow to soften and slow down the momentum of the story which gathers weight as the scale and the callousness of an operation which wiped out whole villages and communities is slowly brought to light.

Information about the Jeju Island massacre was officially repressed and censored in Korea until 2000 when the Korean Government launched a formal investigation into these events. This led to an official apology from the Korean Government to victims and their families in 2003 and, in 2019, an apology from the South Korean police and defence ministry for their involvement. Han Kang is one of a number of Korean authors (Hwang Sok-yong is another), who are using fiction to ensure that the previously repressed events, and the people impacted by them, are not forgotten.

We Do Not Part is not only an absorbing and effective elegiac novel. It stands as an important testament to and memory of a dark aspect of modern Korean history.

We Do Not Part by Han Kang

9.5

9.5/10