Human Acts

How is it, she wonders, that a face can so effectively conceal what lies behind it? How is not indelibly marked by such callousness, brutality, murderousness?

I wanted to be free to fly to wherever they were, and to demand of them: why did you kill me? Why did you kill my sister, what did you do to her?

There will be no forgiveness. Least of all for me.

There will be no forgiveness. Least of all for me.

“But why would the soldiers bother coming here? What harm could the dead possibly do them?”

“According to them, even the wounded lying in hospital beds are a ‘mob’ that need finishing off. Does it really seem likely that they’ll just turn a blind eye to all these corpses, to the families watching over them?”

“But why would the soldiers bother coming here? What harm could the dead possibly do them?”

“According to them, even the wounded lying in hospital beds are a ‘mob’ that need finishing off. Does it really seem likely that they’ll just turn a blind eye to all these corpses, to the families watching over them?”

If Jeong-mi were to come in through the main gate right this second, you would race over and fall to your knees at her feet, beg her to go with you to look for Jeong-dae among the bodies lined up in front of the Provincial Office. Isn’t he your friend? Aren’t you a human being? That’s what Jeong-mi would scream while she thrashed you. And you would beg her forgiveness while she did.

How can anyone go up against a gun with nothing but an empty fist?”

You feel drops of rain pattering down on your head.

You feel drops of rain pattering down on your head.