Human Acts

Content Warning: Human Acts features graphic depictions of violence, sexual violence, and death. It also mentions a death by suicide in Chapter 4.

The first chapter is narrated in second-person perspective, with Dong-ho, a middle-school boy, being the “you” that the narrative addresses. Dong-ho sits on the steps in front of a gymnasium, listening to a memorial service occurring at the Provincial Office in Gwangju, and wondering what will happen when it begins to rain. He has trouble seeing from afar, and knows he will need to get glasses soon.

Dong-ho works with a handful of other civilians in taking care of the dead and helping their families locate their bodies. That morning, Jin-su, who serves as a leader to their group, informed them that more bodies would be arriving. Dong-ho’s job includes keeping a ledger of the victims’ names and coffin numbers, noting who had gone through the group memorial service to prevent any unnecessary repetitions. While the others attend the service, he stays behind in case any relatives show up looking for someone.

After singing the national anthem together, the woman leading the service asks for a moment of silence. After observing the moment, Dong-ho goes back into the gym hall with the bodies. The scent of decay hangs heavily in the air. Thirty-two corpses, still unidentified and unclaimed by relatives, are without coffins and lie grouped near the door. Deeper into the auditorium, seven other corpses lay with their faces and bodies completely obscured by cloth. These corpses are too damaged to be left out in the open and are covered out of respect for the pain they evoke in those who see them. Dong-ho thinks of one, a young woman who was viciously slashed with a bayonet across her face and torso, revealing raw flesh. He wonders about the souls of the corpses, contemplating how long they linger in the body after death.

Dong-ho thinks back to when he first arrived at the Provincial Office. When he entered the building, he met two young women who were cleaning up the bodies and laying them out. He told the women that he was looking for his friend Jeong-dae, and scanned the bodies they’d gathered, but did not find him. The women told him that more corpses would be brought in the next day and asked if he’d help with the work.

Dong-ho himself witnessed Jeong-dae’s death. He remembers how the two of them joined the throng of protestors when soldiers open fired into the crowd, and Jeong-dae was shot. Dong-ho fled during the chaos, pressing himself against the wall of a store among some others, and from there witnessed several deaths. When the soldiers collected the corpses, Dong-ho crept back home, fearful for his life. At home, his family carried on with their normal domestic routine while he struggled to sleep, deeply disturbed by what he witnessed.

Dong-ho and the two girls, high schooler Eun-sook and former factory worker Seon-ju, all work together as a team. The two women complete most of the physical labor, leaving Dong-ho with the task of documenting the bodies. However, one part of the process confuses Dong-ho. At each group memorial service, the national anthem is sung. Dong-ho can’t help but wonder, “Why would you sing the national anthem for people who’d been killed by soldiers? Why cover the coffin with the Taegukgi? As though it wasn’t the nation itself that had murdered them” (23). When he voiced these concerns, Eun-sook told him that the generals who were leading the violence are rebels, but this doesn’t make sense to Dong-ho, and he continues to struggle to comprehend the events unfolding around him.

On the steps of the gym, Dong-ho observes that the crowd is smaller than days before. He thinks again of those who have died, and of his grandmother’s death the previous winter after she contracted pneumonia. During her moment of death, Dong-ho thought he saw something escape from her face, comparing it to a bird escaping an enclosure. He wonders again where the escaped soul goes after death.

Suddenly, a downpour begins. Eun-sook comes to check on Dong-ho and tells him he can go home, but Dong-ho insists on staying. She tells him that she heard the army was coming back into the city that night, and he shouldn’t be out when it happens. Seon-ju comes by and gives Dong-ho some gimbap, but leaves shortly after to nap in the annex. These visits prompt Dong-ho to remember the previous day when his mother and middle brother came by to persuade him to return home. His brother warned him that the soldiers from the Special Warfare Command were not afraid of the civilian militia, and when they returned, they would kill everyone. But Dong-ho insisted that he would only return home after he located Jeong-dae.

Jin-su arrives with more coffins and tells Dong-ho that they’re closing up by six and he should leave by then. Dong-ho thinks of the corpse of the young woman who had been badly damaged by a bayonet, wondering if it’s Jeong-dae’s sister Jeong-mi, but being unable to confirm this without Jeong-dae. As Dong-ho hurries to finish up his work, his mother visits him once more to entreat that he return home. She grabs his wrist, urging him to come home and saying that the army is coming. Dong-ho promises to return home in time for dinner.

In the final scene, an old man comes to visit, looking for his youngest son and granddaughter, both of whom are missing. When he doesn’t see them among the uncovered corpses, he asks about the ones which are covered. Dong-ho is hesitant to show him the horrors done to these bodies by the soldiers, but begins to remove the covering, again wondering where souls go. He wishes his eyesight were worse, so he didn’t have to see the bodies, and waits as the old man looks in horror at the body of the woman.