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Yeong-chae
Seon-ju is one of the students who worked in the Provincial Office, dealing with the corpses left by the Gwangju massacre and protesting against Chun Doo-hwan. Unlike most of the other protestors, Seon-ju’s entire life has been defined by various forms of activism. Before the Gwangju protests, Seon-ju worked alongside her close friend Seong-hee, organizing for labor rights. After the protests, Seon-ju goes to work at an environmental organization, helping to advocate against the use of radioactive substances. Whenever she is jailed for these various forms of resistance, Seon-ju is brutalized and sexually assaulted, leaving her unable to have children or even conceive of intimacy with men. When Yoon asks to interview Seon-ju for his oral history, she is initially reluctant. But memories of the fearless Seong-hee, now in the hospital, eventually encourage her to speak up.
Seon-ju Quotes in Human Acts
The Human Acts quotes below are all either spoken by Seon-ju or refer to Seon-ju. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 5: The Factory Girl, 2002 Quotes
The repeated words from Yoon’s e-mail, a pianist hammering the same keys, flicker in your mind’s eye like a cursor blinking on a computer screen. Testimony. Meaning. Memory. For the future.
[…] Again, you experienced that moment when the contours of suffering coalesce into clarity, a clarity colder and harder than any nightmare could ever be. The moment when you are forced to acknowledge that what you experienced was no mere dream.
[…] Yoon has asked you to remember. To face up to those memories, to bear witness to them. But how can such a thing be possible?
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Some weekend afternoon when the sun-drenched scene outside the window seems unusually still and Dong-ho’s profile flips into your mind, mightn’t the thing flickering in front of your eyes be what they call a soul? In the early hours of the morning, when dreams you can’t remember have left your cheeks wet and the contours of that face jolt into an abrupt clarity, mightn’t that wavering be a soul’s emergence? And the place they emerged from, that they waver back into, would it be as black as night or dusk's coarse weave? Dong-ho, Jin-su, the bodies at your own hands washed and dressed, might they be gathered there in that place, or are they sundered, several, scattered? You are aware that, as an individual, you have the capacity for neither bravery nor strength.
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If I demanded that you go home, Dong-ho; if I’d begged, while we sat there eating gimbap, you would have done as I asked, wouldn’t you?
And that’s why you’re coming to me now.
To ask why I’m still alive.
You walk, your eyes red rim seeming carved with some keen blade. Hurrying back to the bright lights of the emergency department.
There’s only one thing for me to say to you, onni.
If you’ll allow me to.
If you'll please allow me.
[…] As you walk along the straight white line that follows the center of the road, you raise your head to the falling rain.
Don’t die.
Just don’t die.
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Epilogue: The Writer, 2013 Quotes
There was something meek and gentle about those single-lidded half-moon eyes. The traces of infancy still lingered in the soft line of his jaw. It was a face so utterly ordinary you could easily have mistaken it for that of another, a face whose characteristics would be forgotten the moment you turned away from it.
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Seon-ju Character Timeline in Human Acts
The timeline below shows where the character Seon-ju appears in Human Acts. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1: The Boy, 1980
The two women, Dong-ho learns, are Seon-ju and Eun-sook. Eun-sook is in her final year of high school, while Seon-ju works in...
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Everyone splits the labor at the Provincial Office: Eun-sook and Seon-ju work to clean the bodies, Dong-ho covers them, and Jin-su creates the posters that inform...
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...the evening, people bring in bodies of people the soldiers have shot in the suburbs. Seon-ju and Eun-sook frequently have to stuff spilling intestines back inside stomachs, which causes Seon-ju to...
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A while later, Seon-ju arrives, this time bringing gimbap for Dong-ho. Though he eats with gusto, when Seon-ju starts...
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The rain has stopped. Dong-ho reflects on the lie he told Eun-sook and Seon-ju—it wasn’t a neighbor who had seen Jeong-dae die. Dong-ho thinks back to that day: he...
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Chapter 3: The Editor, 1985
...Office. When she gets there, the women are arguing about whether they should carry guns. Seon-ju, always quiet, says very little, though she flashes Eun-sook a smile as she argued that...
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Seon-ju stays behind, as does Dong-ho (“you”), wearing his gym sweater and his blue trackpants. Eun-sook...
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Chapter 5: The Factory Girl, 2002
It is 2002, but Seon-ju can’t stop thinking about years ago, when she would spend all her time with Seong-hee...
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In a flashback that she labels as “Up Rising,” Seon-ju remembers the sound of footsteps. She recalls waking up in the middle of the night...
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At first, Seon-ju declined. But after talking to Yoon more recently, she learned that seven of the ten...
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Though Seon-ju works all day categorizing and transcribing various audio and video recordings, the cassette tapes Yoon...
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...gunned down on their campus. These faces haunt his nightmares, just as the dead bodies Seon-ju used to clean and sort at the Gwangju Provincial Office haunt her memories.
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That night, Seon-ju wakes up long before dawn, disturbed by what she has read. She is almost 42,...
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A few days later, Seon-ju is staying late at work when her boss, Park Yeong-ho drops by. Park is cramming,...
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When Park notices that Seon-ju is using the Dictaphone, smoking cigarettes, and drinking coffee, he assumes she is just cramming...
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The “Up Rising” memory comes again, as Seon-ju reflects on the ways she is different from Seong-hee. While Seong-hee believes in a god...
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Back in the present, Seon-ju pretends to go home when Park leaves the office. But secretly, she turns around, planning...
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Seon-ju thinks back to the factory labor she did as a teenager, which was so physically...
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...police still attacked, dragging the naked girls to the ground and beating them with cudgels. Seon-ju was brutalized so much that her intestines ruptured.
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After Seon-ju healed, she decided to return home to Gwangju rather than continue to fight with the...
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After three years, Seon-ju finally worked her way up to being a machinist in the dress shop. But as...
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Feeling entranced by the chants, Seon-ju followed the bus all the way to the Gwangju Provincial Office. Though the protests in...
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In the present, as Seon-ju approaches a hospital, time seems to blur together. Seon-ju can still hear the girls’ protest...
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Seon-ju once felt proud that she was able to repress her memories—she was angry with Yoon...
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In the present, Seon-ju is at the hospital—in reality now instead of in her dreams. As Seon-ju waits for...
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Seon-ju washes her face, brushes her teeth, and applies lotion. She wonders what Seong-hee will look...
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Still in the hospital waiting room, Seon-ju falls into a restless sleep. She dreams of the phrases from Yoon’s emails: “testimony. Meaning....
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When Seon-ju wakes to the sound of a hospital patient moaning, she decides to leave. In the...
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Seon-ju recalls driving around with the other female students, begging the residents of Gwangju to at...
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After several years, Seon-ju was able to track down Seong-hee, who had also been in prison. Both women have...
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In the present, the “Up Rising” memory comes again. Seon-ju recalls that she came back to Gwangju “to die.” At first, the city looked similar,...
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In the present, as Seon-ju continues her walk away from the hospital, she thinks back to Dong-ho asking why she...
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As she thinks of Dong-ho and Jin-su, Seon-ju reflects that she has “the capacity for neither bravery nor strength.” She blames herself for...
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With the hospital behind her, Seon-ju thinks the thought she has been avoiding: that she is responsible for Dong-ho’s death. If...
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