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Hyunseon Lee, Professorial Research Associate at Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, and Centre for Creative Industries, Media and Screen Studies, SOAS, University of London

We Do Not Part by Han Kang: a haunting story which forces the reader to remember a horrific incident in Korea’s past that it tried to erase

Jeju inhabitants awaiting execution in late 1948 wikimedia, CC BY

We Do Not Part is the latest book by Korean writer Han Kang, who won the Nobel prize in literature in 2024. The book begins in fragments that ebb between dark dream, waking nightmare and memories of how the book’s protagonist Kyungha got to this terrible way of living.

Even for those who do not know much about Korean history, it is fairly clear that something awful has changed Kyungha. When she closes her eyes images of women clutching children, black tree trunks jutting like limbs from the earth and so much snow flood into her mind.

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