VOL.93/2026.04

We Do Not Part by Han Kang

The Scream of Silence: We Do Not Part

2025.12.01

Han Kang’s novel We Do Not Part (Munhakdongne Publishing) recounts the Jeju Massacre, which took place on Jeju Island in South Korea in 1948 and claimed the lives of thousands of people. This event remained buried in silence for many years. The author conveys this historical weight not through numbers and statistics, but through the intertwined stories of three women. Thus, the events are not merely information, but are etched into my mind through an emotional connection.

A book that begins with a dream leaves me with a heaviness in my chest and a knot in my throat from the very first pages. Those familiar feelings I encountered in The White Book (Munhakdongne Publishing) and Human Acts (Changbi Publishers) envelop me once again. This time, before me are a mother who has fallen silent after losing her son, the writer Gyongha, who is trying to confront her own past, and the photographer Inson, who is tracing the losses in Jeju. Women with different voices, each carrying the same burden. Looking at them, I see loss, motherhood, and helplessness.
The narrative is both calm and jarring; at times an impartial observation, at others as quiet as a whisper... Yet within this silence, screams are hidden. Han Kang conveys the depth of pain through silence. At that moment, I realise that this story is not just about an event that took place in South Korea, but about all the silenced and forgotten things in the world. Because wars, massacres, and collective suffering are often made invisible under the pretext of “social harmony”. A veil of oblivion is drawn over them. It reminds me of snow, white and serene on the surface, but concealing frozen earth, buried stories, and heavy silence beneath. What will remain when the snow melts?
Throughout the book, I see once again what interests and political power can do, regardless of geography or history. That is why I feel I must listen not only to the past of a single country, but also to the silences across different periods and geographies. From the silence of Jeju, I come to the silences on our own soil. Untold stories emerge in my mind. At this point, the book strikes me like an elegy. I think that sometimes not saying goodbye means striving not to leave things behind, and sometimes striving not to forget.
When I finish the book, I realise that life sometimes unfolds before us like a blank page, and we colour that page with our memories. The result isn’t always a beautiful landscape; sometimes frozen memories and broken scenes remain. I ask myself: Do we truly heal by remembering, or do we grow stronger by forgetting?

Written by G?nsenin Miray Dirlik (Reader of K-Book Trends)