The inspiration for the Korean author's book Human Acts stems from a devastating massacre in Gwangju over 40 years ago, but the ripple effects are still being felt today.
Nobel prize-winner Han Kang 's novel Human Acts was inspired by the trauma of the 1980 Gwangju uprising.Han's latest novel — which will be published in English next year — covers a similar instance of historical pain in Korea , with a focus on the Jeju Island uprising.When Han Kang was nine years old, a massacre of civilians by soldiers in her hometown of Gwangju drastically reshaped the course of South Korea n history.
"The foul smell of the rotting corpses is still strongly etched in the deepest part of my brain," Lee said. "Citizens demanded democracy, but soldiers suppressed it by force, killing and injuring many people — and the wounds have not healed so far.""About 10 metres away, in front of me, a young man was shot and lay bleeding. He shivered for a moment, then went limp," he told the ABC.Lee managed to escape before the military finally quashed the uprising, but a deep sense of survivor's guilt later motivated him and some collaborators to document the brutal events.
Dr Jang, a senior research fellow at the University of Vienna, pointed out that longstanding censorship and previous conservative governments had meant the experiences of Gwangju victims were not properly investigated for many years.
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