Jenny Farrell discusses Han Kang’s literary struggle against the oppression, violence and alienation of late capitalism
On 10 December, Han Kang, a writer deeply attuned to South Korea’s painful history of violence and resistance, will receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the second South Korean and the first Asian woman to earn this honour. This recognition resonates deeply with this state’s progressive forces, as it represents a much-needed validation amid ongoing political turbulence. Caught off-guard by the writer’s global acclaim, President Yoon Suk-Yeol’s conservative government struggles to acknowledge her achievement, without revealing the contradictions of its own reactionary policies.
The historical background
Throughout the 20th century, South Korea’s regimes have been aligned with external imperialist forces, particularly the US, and have consistently suppressed progressive movements. Under Japanese occupation (1910-1945), Korea’s resources and labour were exploited for imperial gains. The independence movement spanned all sectors of society, with left-wing groups – including communists and socialists – not only demanding independence, but also championing agrarian reforms and workers’ rights.
A new working class emerged across ports, railroads, mines, and in select factories, as Japan transformed this country into a strategic base for its planned expansion across Asia. After Japan’s defeat in 1945, Korea was divided along the 38th parallel. The US military government in the South brutally suppressed all organizations or groups advocating democratic values, effectively dismantling the labour movement until the late 1980s. In rural areas, strong support for pro-democracy struggles led to significant unrest, which was violently suppressed, starting with the Jeju Uprising (1948), where tens of thousands were killed resisting the US-backed government.
The ruling class, beginning with Syngman Rhee’s regime, was fiercely anti-communist and relied heavily on violence to maintain power. Landlords, capitalists, and leading military figures dominated political life, while the government acted as a US puppet regime. Syngman Rhee, with US support, is widely believed to have been involved in the assassinations of nationalist leaders Kim Koo and Yeo Woon-Young, who promoted a peaceful transition from Japanese occupation to a democratic Korea, and a unified state.
Resistance continued underground, and despite the repression, demands for democratic rights persisted. The Gwangju Uprising in 1980, under Chun Doo-Hwan’s dictatorship, was one of the most significant expressions of mass opposition against military rule. The brutal military suppression of this pro-democracy movement, supported by tacit US approval, highlighted the collusion between the military dictatorship, US imperialist interests, and powerful national figures.
Mass protests eventually led to democratic reforms in 1987. However, economic power has remained concentrated in the hands of elites, prompting progressive forces to continue their struggle for social and economic justice. Nevertheless, a recent poll shows 65% of South Koreans view the U.S. favourably, a shift from the strong anti-US sentiment prevalent from the 1980s to early 2000s.
Han Kang’s literary and political triumph
Han Kang’s work, particularly her novels Human Acts (2014) and We Do Not Part (2021), confronts events in South Korea’s past – when the people rose against the military dictatorship, only to be violently suppressed. At the heart of Human Acts lies the massacre of Gwangju (1980), while the Jeju massacre (1948) and references to further atrocities either in Korea or with that state’s involvement (e.g., in Vietnam) are explored in We Do Not Part. These uprisings remain deeply contentious issues, especially as conservative elites continue to distort and revise history, blaming the resistance on North Korean infiltration and justifying the oppression.
As recent polls in progressive media outlets indicate, for the 80% of her fellow citizens who disapprove of Yoon’s leadership, Han Kang’s win is celebrated not just a literary triumph, but also as a political one. Some on the right have attempted to undermine the laureate’s accomplishment, with local novelist Kim Kyu-nah asserting Han was “distorting history” and suggests she received the award “because she’s a woman”. Kim’s view that the prize should have been given to a Chinese writer instead seems ironic, given the state’s staunchly anti-China and unconditionally pro-US stance. These attacks mirror the campaign waged against South Korea’s only other Nobel laureate, former President Kim Dae-jung, who was awarded the Peace Prize in 2000 despite fierce opposition from the country’s conservative establishment.
Han Kang, for her part, has refused to engage in any celebration. She declined to hold a press conference, citing the humanitarian crises unfolding in Palestine and Ukraine, extending her commitment to justice and human dignity beyond her state’s borders.
Human Acts
For readers with a political and historical interest approaching the writer’s work for the first time, Human Acts might be a good starting point. This harrowing novel traces the legacy of the Gwangju Uprising through multiple narratives spanning decades, starting with the brutal killing of a young boy, Dong-ho, who becomes a symbol of the uprising’s victims. Each chapter follows different characters, from those who knew him to others grappling with the physical and psychological aftermath of the event. Through their intertwined lives, Han explores both personal and collective trauma caused by state brutality, the suppression of dissent, and the long-term scars of political oppression. The use of a second-person narrator in two sections effectively reinforces readers’ identification with the victims.
In the author’s lyrical and sombre prose, there is a clear sympathy for the oppressed, drawing attention to the violence not only of bullets but also of efforts to erase memory and history. The book explores themes of solidarity, communal resistance, and the necessity of acknowledging past wrongs for collective healing. It underscores the importance of remembering these struggles within the broader context of global anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist movements. Yet, the entrenched US interest in maintaining South Korea as what Vijay Prashad describes as a “de facto member of NATO+” and “a de facto militarized colony of the US” does not clearly emerge in relation to its involvement in repression and massacres.
We Do Not Part
However, mention of US involvement is made in We Do Not Part, published seven years later. This novel not only reveals the emotional toll that Human Acts took on the author but also deepens and expands on the theme of government aggression, torture, and widespread killings. At the centre of the story is the Jeju massacre of 1948: “The governing US military ordered that everyone on the island, all roughly three hundred thousand people, be wiped out if that’s what it took to stop their communisation.” The novel follows Kyungha, an author plagued by nightmares and migraines after researching the Gwangju Uprising, as she plans a memorial installation with her artist friend Inseon, to be erected near Inseon’s home.
It is clear that the two artists have grappled with other mass killings in their work, among them the involvement of South Korean soldiers in the US war in Vietnam. As the plot develops, Kyungha is drawn into the history of the Jeju massacre, where over 30,000 people, including children, were killed—a trauma that has impacted Inseon’s family. The narrative becomes increasingly surreal as Kyungha’s consciousness begins to fragment, and Han interweaves somnambulant episodes with documentary-like accounts by survivors. The imagery of snow is used here as in much of the writer’s work, with its connotations of freezing, both covering and uncovering. Metaphors of winter and ice, denoting forbidding times and societies, are widely used throughout the arts across the world.
The White Book
Nonetheless, white is also the colour of mourning and remembrance in Korea. This connects the novel with Han’s earlier work, The White Book (2016), which delves into various themes, including personal grief. Central to the narrative is the author’s stay in Warsaw during a freezing winter, where she reflects on the city. Specifically, her focus lies on the aftermath of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, a significant resistance effort by the Polish against Nazi occupation. Between October 1944 and January 1945, the German fascists systematically razed Warsaw, destroying 85-90% of the city’s buildings, killing about 200 000 civilians during the rising and in the aftermath. This historical context serves as a powerful backdrop in The White Book, as Warsaw becomes a symbol of both violence and rebellion, central themes in the novelist’s work.
The Vegetarian
In 2016, Han Kang was awarded the International Booker Prize for The Vegetarian (2007). This novel seems at first rather different from the others discussed here. It presents a compelling and unsettling narrative of a woman’s psychological unravelling and offers a profound critique of the alienating forces at work in South Korean society. The novel illustrates how the oppressive structures of imperialist society—particularly its patriarchal and violent dimensions—exert control over individuals. The protagonist Yeong-hye’s radical rejection of societal norms is manifested in several ways: her refusal to eat meat—triggered by a dream about animal butchery—her withdrawal from social and familial roles, and her eventual desire to become a tree.
This behaviour starkly illustrates the alienation experienced by individuals in a society dominated by brutality and repression. Such disconnection extends beyond Yeong-hye alone, touching the lives of those around her, especially women. Indeed, deeply entrenched male supremacy in South Korean society today, causes women to remain largely subservient, often reluctant even to voice their opinions directly. In the workplace, females earn about 70% of men’s wages, with males holding most managerial roles. The same pattern exists in politics, where only 20% of representatives are women.
Han frequently uses dreams and nightmares, such as the one of brutal butchery at the core of this text, to explore a subconscious awareness of a harrowing world. The existential quality of the novel evokes Franz Kafka’s works, where individuals are confronted by the absurd and oppressive forces of an intensely alienating late capitalist society. As Han’s protagonist loses her mental engagement with this society, her most radical attempt to exit it leads to self-annihilation – the ultimate alienation.
Greek Lessons
Detachment is also central to Greek Lessons (2011), where two nameless protagonists each experience a profound loss: one loses the ability to speak, the other to see. Isolated from society, their diminishing sensory involvement with the world deepens their sense of detachment. Of the mute woman, we read: “She would have still had language then, so the emotions would have been clearer, stronger. But now there are no words inside her. Words and sentences track her like ghosts, at a remove from her body, but near enough to be within ear- and eyeshot. It is thanks to that distance that any emotion not strong enough drops away from her like a scrap of weakly adhering tape.”
The reason for her loss of voice lies in her early youth, when she longed for a language that allows for certainty – one that, like the Big Bang, encapsulates totality or complete truth. She initially overcame this by learning the word for “library” in a French class; now she hopes to reclaim her voice by learning ancient Greek, granting access to ancient philosophers. The blind teacher experiences a sense of cultural dislocation, particularly through his memories of living in Germany – where he resided in Kriegsstrasse (“War Street”) – and through dreams of being lost. His family history of blindness could point to a tradition of isolation. His disconnection and fading sensory grasp on the world, parallel the female protagonist’s disconnection from language. Both protagonists, whose anonymity invites generalization, increasingly lose their connection to the sensory world, underscoring the distance between what exists and what can be coped with.
Much like Kafka’s work, Greek Lessons and The Vegetarian depict individual detachment without probing larger societal forces. Nevertheless, in both works, there is a suggestion, however slight, that one other person, suffering similar isolation, understands and helps build a bridge. Notably, in neither novel set in contemporary South Korea is there a resistance movement comparable to those in Han’s historical settings. One could argue that the absence of a common popular opposition contributes to the alienation experienced by the protagonists.
In a society where far-right figures discredit the Gwangju Uprising, perpetuate censorship and historical revisionism, and rehabilitate leaders like Chun Doo-Hwan, Han Kang’s Nobel serves as a powerful symbol of resistance – a victory for all who champion democracy, truth, and the remembrance of lives sacrificed for freedom. Her work does more than narrate the past; it actively shapes a space for critical engagement, urging readers to reckon with history’s legacy and the impact of an alienated society, as this reverberates through ongoing struggles worldwide. Thus, her Nobel Prize not only honours artistic achievement – it recognizes and rewards an unwavering dedication to justice and the unyielding pursuit of truth, amidst forces that seek to silence it.
I would like to thank Soonhyung Hong for proving invaluable assistance in the research for this article.
Tags: Nobel Prize, Human Acts, The Vegetarian, Greek Lessons, The White Book, We Do Not Part, Gwangju Uprising.
