Han Kang Talks About His Jeju Book, ‘We Are Not Separated’

In Han Kang’s last novel, a person lost the tips of two of his fingers in an accident. The surgeon tells them that the treatment is terrible and painful. Every three minutes, for several weeks, a nurse carefully plunges a needle deep into the suture on each finger, drawing blood, to prevent the finger from rotting.

“They said we have to let the blood flow, but I have to feel the pain,” the patient told a friend. “Otherwise, the nerves below the cut will die.”

In her fiction, Ms. Han explores the unfolding of her country’s historical wounds. He delves into two of South Korea’s darkest episodes: the 1980 massacre in the city of Gwangju, which destroyed the pro-democracy movement, and an earlier, even deadlier chapter. even in Jeju Island, where tens of thousands of people died.

Ms. Han has attracted a wider audience, both at home and abroad, since she won the Nobel Prize in Literature in October. The English translation of the Jeju-set novel “We Do Not Part” was released this week in the United States, more than three years after it was published in Korean.

His work on South Korea’s authoritarian past has seemed more important since December, when the president briefly imposed martial law. He was then caught and arrested.

Ms Han, who has been largely reclusive since winning the Nobel, said in a rare interview that she was still thinking about what had just happened. In his book, he said, it was never his intention to switch from one sad chapter of modern Korean history to another.

But after “Human Acts”, the Gwangju novel, came out in 2014, he had a nightmare. Trying to make sense of his haunting images—thousands of dark, forbidding trunks standing on snow-covered hills as the sea rolls in—led him to Jeju, a southern island with aquamarine waters, widely known as peaceful travel.

Between 1947 and 1954, after the uprising, an estimated 30,000 people were killed by the police, the military, and anti-Communist vigilantes, with the support of the US military. About a third of the victims are women, children or adults.

In “We Do Not Part,” the protagonist, Kyungha, a writer who is plagued by recurring nightmares after publishing a book about a town called “G—,” walks through the heavy snow that covers the Jeju, on a journey that leads to revelations about several generations of a murdered family.

Writing about her personal encounters with some of South Korea’s most harrowing times, Ms. Han said, made her feel deeply connected to the experiences of victims of atrocities everywhere, and to people who never stop. remember them.

“It’s pain and it’s blood, but it’s the flow of life, connecting the part that can be left to die and the part that lives,” he said in Korean in a video call from his home in Seoul. “It connects the dead memories and the living present, leaving nothing to die. It’s not just about Korean history, I thought, it’s about all of humanity.

Theresa Phung, general manager of Yu & Me Books in Manhattan’s Chinatown, said the store has seen excitement about Ms. Han’s work, and an uptick in sales, which doesn’t always follow the Nobel.

“One of his most impressive qualities is his ability to take specific situations and cultural situations and bring you into that moment, but he’s very aware that these hyperspecific moments repeat themselves in history,” said Mrs. Phung. “Whether you read about what’s happening in Gwangju or around the dinner table, life is everywhere and problems are everywhere.”

Born in Gwangju to a novelist father, Ms. Han spent the first two years of her career as a journalist, while working on her poetry and novels. When he tried to write his first novel at the age of 26, he rented a simple room in Jeju, overlooking the water, from an old woman who lived downstairs from him.

On a walk to the post office one day, his landlord pointed to a concrete wall near a hackberry tree in the middle of town and said matter-of-factly, “That’s where people get shot and killed.” that winter.”

That memory came flooding back to Ms. Han as she struggled to realize her wildest dreams, which she realized were about time and memories, she said.

“It comes out of nowhere like that,” he said. “In fact, all the people in Jeju are survivors, witnesses and grieving family members.”

Ms. Han, 54, first became popular with English-speaking readers in 2016 with her novel “The Vegetarian.” Her dramatic language and story of a housewife’s quiet rebellion against violence and patriarchy have won readers around the world, and won the International Book Award for Fiction. this year. His works have been translated into 28 languages. The latest release, “We Do Not Part,” was translated by e. Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris.

In South Korea, Ms. Han has been a writer of poetry, short stories and fiction for over two decades. But his global success widened his readership at home, where his account of Gwangju—a pivotal moment for democracy—landed him on the blacklist of writers and other cultural figures. in South Korea.

He speaks, as in his books, with the control of a poet, choosing each word and phrase with thought and care. Kim Seon-young, who edited the Korean version of “Human Acts” and became friends, recalled that Ms. Han once jokingly told her that if her plane crashed, Ms. Kim was forbidden to change a syllable. which they did not agree on. about, even if the grammar is a bit wrong.

Ms. Han’s Nobel, the first for a South Korean author, was celebrated like the Olympics, with her books sold, giant banners across the country welcoming her and television cameras swarming. to a neighborhood bookstore in Seoul that he quietly picked up. run for six years. Her son, who is in his 20s, felt surrounded by attention and begged her not to mention him in interviews, she said.

Since receiving the award, he has been trying to return to his quiet life of writing, mostly in a sunlit room with wooden clouds overlooking the small courtyard. He said a little snow was drifting down, covering the wildflowers he planted last year, which he had left white before the frost.

“Being able to travel freely and see people’s lifestyles, on an anonymous level, free to write without burdens, this is the best world for a writer,” said Ms. Han. .

The Nobel came during another turbulent period for South Korea, which has not yet reached a conclusion, and looked from one side as if it could cause bloodshed. Two days before Ms. Han left for Sweden for the ceremony, President Yoon Seok Yul declared martial law and sent armed soldiers into the National Assembly — something that had never happened before. there was a massacre in Gwangju.

Ms. Han said she watched the situation unfold from the street until the National Assembly overturned the military verdict in the morning.

“Remembering the years 79 and 80, whether they experienced it directly or indirectly, they know that it should not be repeated, that’s why they took to the streets at midnight,” he said pointing to the deputies. and legislators. protestors who protested Mr. Yoon’s order. “In this way the past and the present are connected.”