Review: 'We Do Not Part' (작별하지 않는다) by Han Kang (한강), trans. by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris
Pub. Date: 06/02/2025 (originally 2021)
Publisher: Penguin General; Hamish Hamilton
Beginning one morning in December, We Do Not Part traces the path of Kyungha as she travels from the city of Seoul into the forests of Jeju Island, to the home of her old friend Inseon. Hospitalized following an accident, Inseon has begged Kyungha to hasten there to feed her beloved pet bird, who will otherwise die.
Kyungha takes the first plane to Jeju, but a snowstorm hits the island the moment she arrives, plunging her into a world of white. Beset by icy wind and snow squalls, she wonders if she will arrive in time to save the bird – or even survive the terrible cold which envelops her with every step. As night falls, she struggles her way to Inseon’s house, unaware as yet of the descent into darkness which awaits her.
There, the long-buried story of Inseon’s family surges into light, in dreams and memories passed from mother to daughter, and in a painstakingly assembled archive documenting a terrible massacre on the island seventy years before.
We Do Not Part is a hymn to friendship, a eulogy to the imagination and above all an indictment against forgetting.
We Do Not Part is a book about history and trauma, about how trauma gets passed down, even silently, through generations, and about how, even without you being aware of it, you may be carrying it with you. In this book, Han Kang addresses a part of Korean history I was unaware of, specifically the Jeju Uprising (April 1948 - May 1949) and the Bodo League Massacre and Gyeongsan Cobalt Mine Massacre that followed. Hundreds of thousands of Koreans, men, women, young children, babies, and elderly, died during these massacres and it took decades for the full truth to emerge about it and for the bereaved to receive recognition. As such, violence and pain reverberate throughout We Do Not Part, which does not make it an easy read. Not only are there detailed descriptions of war crimes, torture, and violence, but it is also made clear how a trauma like this leaves traces throughout a people and country. Both main characters in the book, Kyungha and Inseon, are haunted in different ways by the past. For Kyungha, she is followed by horrid dreams ever since writing a book about a massacre, which may or may not have led to the depression she is currently experiencing. Inseon, meanwhile, comes from Jeju and her family was deeply marked by the horrors they experienced. As an adult, Inseon is uncovering this history, while coming to terms with her own ideas of her parents. I am German and, in a weird way, I recognised certain elements of Han Kang's discussion of history and trauma in the way I deal with my country's past. What happened in the places I live, the horrors that were committed there, it leaves traces I still encounter every day through memorial plaques or stories that are shared. Of course the Holocaust and Nazi regime are very different from the massacres and regime of Korea in the 1940's and '50s, but this heavy burden of the past, of knowingly being somewhere where evil happened, it's a shadow I recognise and whose weight is almost unbearable at times. Somehow, in We Do Not Part, Han Kang manages to both shine a stark, unflinching light onto these horrors, while grasping the flickering, shadowed perspective of trauma, which can't bear to look back but is forced to every time.
We Do Not Part is split into three parts, ironically, called 'I. Bird', 'II. Night', and 'III. Flame'. The novel is largely told through Kyungha's perspective, especially in the first part. She is living in Seoul, although you could hardly call it living. Kyungha is haunted by dreams of trees, snow, graves, and floods, ever since writing a book about a massacre and now she is trying to write a final will. She is roused, however, when her friend Inseon asks her to come to the hospital, where she is currently recovering after an accident. Inseon was a photographer and documentary filmmaker, until she returned to Jeju Island to look after her ageing mother. Inseon needs Kyungha to go to Jeju immediately, to give her bird water because otherwise she will die. And so Kyungha lands on Jeju as an epic snow storm takes over the island. The whole of We Do Not Part, arguably, takes place over two or so days, as Kyungha heads to Jeju, struggles to Inseon's house, and there has to deal with the past of Inseon's family, their experiences during the Jeju Uprising and the following massacres, and how this shaped both Inseon and herself. What of the latter two parts of the novel is "real" and what is a dream hardly matters. We Do Not Part becomes at once a novel about the horrors of the past and a novel about the strength of friendship. This may sound cliche and it is important to know that it is not as if friendship saves the day in We Do Not Part. Rather, Han Kang manages to depict this quiet resilience you can find in friendship, which allows you to face the darkest parts of yourself and history, the things you fear but know are there, which allows you to share a burden, to gaze into the abyss together and feel a little less alone in the face of it. Without this core friendship, and the insights we get into it, We Do Not Part would have been a deeply depressing novel, but through it, Han Kang almost manages to shine a light onto how we might be able to cope with the horrors of the past. By dragging it into the light, looking at it together, and being there with one another.
As I mentioned above, I read The Vegetarian at the end of 2024. I had heard so much about the book that my expectations were quite high, but I was not prepared for the dreamlike oddness of the book, the distance it took from its purported main character. I think I need to reread it at some point. Because of this experience, I went into We Do Not Part a little less sure of whether Han Kang's writing worked for me. And yet, it gripped me almost immediately in a way The Vegetarian hadn't. We Do Not Part is a lyrical, dreamlike book as well, but here it reflects the mindset of trauma in a way that eases the reader into the experience. In their review on We Do Not Part, Roman Clodia talked about the the varied use of symbolism, especially the snow and fingers, which come to mean different things, and about how these 'sorts of dualities of imagery give a gorgeous coherence to the book'. This kind of crystalised for me what worked so well about We Do Not Part, which is that this slow layering of symbols and ideas functions almost like the snow in the novel itself. The first few gentle snowflakes of snow can be ignored or looked past, but once it comes down heavy that softness becomes heavy and oppressive. Han Kang builds up slowly to the absolute horror of the historical events We Do Not Part focuses on until, in the end, much like Kyungha and Inseon, you cannot escape it and have to face it. It is a slow path, but by the end, Kyungha and Inseon were people to me, rather than characters, and people I cared very deeply about. I also think e. yaewon/이예원 and Paige Aniyah Morris did an excellent job translating the book. While, of course, I don't know how the Korean read, I definitely got a sense of the lyricism and dreamlike quality Han Kang must have intended for this book.
I give this novel...
5 Universes!
We Do Not Part is a stunning and painful book, which uncovers a period of history we really all should know more about. It is a novel about pain and the worst kinds of things that can be done, but it is also about how we look at these things unflinchingly, even if it hurts. While it isn't a "how to deal with trauma" book, it is the kind of book that might be able to give you a language for the things you are dealing with.
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