May 18th, 1980. The Gwangju uprising. A student-led movement protesting against the coup led by Chun Doo-hwan, yet another dictator for South Korea. The uprising was violently suppressed by the military. Violently ? How many people died? Officially, it was somewhere between 100 and 200, but it seems more likely that the figure was ten times higher. We hear several voices : a young boy, his mother, a prisoner, a factory worker… They all describe the horror, corpses pilled on corpses, torture, fear, lives lost, lives ruined. This novel is a testimony to memory and resistance. A difficult read, but for me, a new knowledge and an act of remembrance that leaves no room for indifference.
“Is it true that human beings are fundamentally cruel? Is the experience of cruelty the only thing we share as a species? Is the dignity that we cling to nothing but self-delusion, masking from ourselves this single truth: that each one of us is capable of being reduced to an insect, a ravening beast, a lump of meat? To be degraded, damaged, slaughtered – is this the essential fate of humankind, one that history has confirmed as inevitable?”
Original title : 소년이 온다 / sonyeoni onda
Translated from Korean