We have now begun to read further into the book, and so as part of the reading and the themes we encountered, I chose to answer this conceptual question. I will hopefully revisit this question later and see how my thinking has changed after finishing the book.
Conceptual Questions: Can a nation ever fully recover from a dark past?
I think Human Acts is a really good novel in regards to this question, as one of the most prominent themes within the book is grief, which is explored from different perspectives and at different times. While we haven’t read past the immediate aftermath of the uprising, I think some of the contextual knowledge on the resentment against Chun Doo Hwan, who was the leader at the time of the uprising, even 20 years later. I think so far, based on primary accounts and context, Han Kang would argue that nations or even people can never fully recover and that many things can reopen the wounds of the past. In the introduction, it is mentioned that Han Kang was deeply hurt by the election of Park Chung-hee’s daughter. This suggests that it was not her initial grief that led her to write this book, but the reminder of the events years later, after South Korea’s progression into a supposedly stronger democracy. I think the fact that Kang as well as a variety of other authors choose to write books about horrifying conflicts and events years after they occur suggests that while a dark past can be forgotten, those who live through those events can never fully recover from them. And to that end, even when all those who experience the events pass away, the legacy of those events, and the stories and emotions they pass down, may stay. However, I think I will be better able to answer this question in relation to the novel by the end of the book, so I would like to revisit it then.