VOL.96/2026.07

The White Book by Han Kang

2024.06.03

The novel The White Book (Munhakdongne Publishing Group), written by Korean author Han Kang, is a profound philosophical work that revolves around white elements with an interesting approach to express pain, grief, mourning, and life. The author, Han Kang, took inspiration from her mother’s experience of losing her first premature baby girl 2 hours after giving birth in unfortunate circumstances.
When writer Han Kang moved to live in a city where the identity of those streets is intertwined with its painful and depressing past, she started recalling her past experiences by making a list of white elements, a color to hide from everything that is impure, to disappear into a world in which she had a chance to live as another soul, her deceased sister.
However, everything that is white is destined to disappear “though this eternity is in fact an illusion: the earth will one day vanish, everything will one day vanish.” The white fog fades after a while, the sugar cube melts in water as the ice melts, the white wave disappears after the tide... Every white element that passed through her life would barely take hold for a moment and then disappear into nothingness.
Despite the color white being destined to disappear or get replaced, it is still clear and free of impurities, so she explores her memories and imagines new possibilities without ever forgetting that her fate is to vanish. There was even a time when death was flapping its wings on her baby sister’s white face, which looked like songpyeon (a traditional Korean food made of rice powder). As Han Kang meditated on this idea, she would learn the process of loving life despite its length or ephemerality, its easiness or complexity.
That’s how fleeting our experiences and emotions are. We might cry for a moment, then find ourselves dying of laughter over a ridiculous joke, feeling peaceful floating in a fishing boat if we never experienced an ounce of sadness. There is also comfort lying in the impossibility of anything continuing forever, a kind of comfort and submission when you allow yourself to not hold on to a feeling, to let go of things or memories, and to continue living without objection.

Written by Imane Bouhnika (Reader of K-Book Trends)