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Dong-ho
The writer, closely based on Human Acts author Han Kang herself, is a novelist. The writer was born in Gwangju, living in a hanok there until she was nine. When the writer’s father moved the family to Seoul, Dong-ho’s family bought the house and moved in. As a little girl, the writer saw herself in parallel to Dong-ho, hearing snippets of conversation about this bright, creative young boy who had been shot down in the Gwangju riots. Now, as an adult, the writer returns to Gwangju, determined to capture Dong-ho’s story (and to share the larger narrative of the 5:18 uprising with the world). The writer ends the narrative by traveling to Dong-ho’s grave, lighting a candle to honor this young boy she never knew. As the candle “flutter[s]” in the wind, the writer imagines that she feels a connection to Dong-ho’s soul, kept alive by her words of memory and testimony.
The Writer Quotes in Human Acts
The Human Acts quotes below are all either spoken by The Writer or refer to The Writer. 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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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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As it turned out, none of my relatives died; none were injured or even arrested. But all through that autumn in 1980, my thoughts returned to that tiny room at one end of the kitchen, where I used to lie on my stomach to do my homework, that room with the cold paper floor—had the boy used it to spread out his homework on its cold paper floor, then lie stomach-down just as I had? The middle-school kid I'd heard the grown-ups whispering about. How had the seasons kept on turning for me, when time had stopped forever for him that May?
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Permission? Yes, you have my permission, but only if you do it properly. Please, write your book so that no one will ever be able to desecrate my brother’s memory again […]
Whenever we had a toe war, I always won.
He was really ticklish, you see.
All I had to do was poke his foot with my big toe and he’d start squirming.
At first I couldn’t tell whether he was grimacing like that because he was ticklish, or because it really hurt…
But then he would turn bright red and laugh.
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I didn’t pray. I didn't close my eyes, or observe a minute silence. The candles burned steadily. Their orange flames undulating soundlessly, gradually being sucked into the center and hollowed out. Only then did I notice how incredibly cold my ankles were. Without realizing it, I’d been kneeling in a snowdrift that covered Dong-ho’s grave. The snow had soaked through my socks, seeping in right through to my skin. I stared, mute, at that flame’s wavering outline, fluttering like a bird’s translucent wing.
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Get the entire Human Acts LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Writer Character Timeline in Human Acts
The timeline below shows where the character The Writer appears in Human Acts. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Epilogue: The Writer, 2013
When the writer was nine, she and her family moved from Gwangju to a suburb of Seoul. As...
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The writer remembers her childhood home as a “typical, old-style hanok,” with its rooms arranged around a...
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...house in Seoul in the middle of the night. They searched the house, and though the writer ’s parents never explained what was happening, she knew that her parents’ attempts to be...
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Two years later, the writer ’s father returned home from a visit to Gwangju with a photo chapbook of the...
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Now, in 2013, the writer returns to Gwangju. She sees that the floor of the gym—where Dong-ho and the others...
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The writer is staying with her younger brother, who still lives in Gwangju. She has not spent...
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The writer then visits the exhibit at the 5:18 Research Institute, where she studies old footage from...
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The writer throws herself into her work, reading every document she can get her hands on and...
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In January of 2013, the writer attends a wedding. She feels that the bright colors and celebration is incongruous with her...
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In one interview the writer reads, a survivor compares torture to cancer—in both cases, the memories grow and metastasize, as...
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Eventually, the writer goes to the new house where her old hanok used to be. The new owner...
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The middle brother is initially hesitant to share his story with the writer . But then he thinks about Dong-ho’s mother, and he decides to speak the words...
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The writer acknowledges that just as there were some especially aggressive soldiers, there were also some soldiers...
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“Dong-ho,” the writer thinks, “I need you to take my hand and guide me away from all this....
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At last, the writer finds Dong-ho’s grave in the Mangwol-dong cemetery. She has brought a few candles, which she...
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