We Do Not Part is the only book of Han Kang I have read. It is mesmerizing and puzzling. The juxtaposition of a friendship between two friends, one a writer (Kyungha) and the other an artist (Inseon), is engrossing, and their individual challenges seem murky and overwhelming at the same time. When Inseon is injured while working and Kyungha is the only person who presumably can help her, Kyungha rushes to the hospital. The procedure that Inseon must endure every few minutes to heal her severely injured fingers is shocking and graphic.

When Inseon asks Kyungha to go to her mountain cabin to find her bird, Ama, who will die without water and food, she determines to help her friend. The word Ama, or mother, in more than one culture and language, is obviously intentional. The journey that Kyungha takes to find Inseon's house is first on a bus that seems to make its way through a dream world; we don't know if it is real or not. Then, Kyungha makes her way through deep snow, flurries, cold, and an eventual plunge into a snowy hole. The descriptions of the setting are explicit and vague at the same time, and the reader wonders if Kyungha will reach the house and the bird. Her determination to help her friend is adamantine and loving. The ethereal description of the snow, flake by flake, is stunningly beautiful and slow while Khungha's determination to reach her friend's house is driven and real.

The rest of the book deals with the historical mass executions that took place in 1948 on Jeju Island. This horrific genocide of 30,000 has affected Inseon's family and creates a sanguinary and realistic contrast to the dream of Kungha's journey. Even the intrusion of the coping saw under the bed at Inseon's house is a jarring but realistic addition.

The writing in this book is often quiet and slow and then will be compared to the brutality of the killing on Jeju or even Inseon's pain as she lies in the hospital and is treated with savagery in the only way that can heal her wounds.

Thank you to Random House and Net Galley for the opportunity to read this remarkable book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for an advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review!

This was one of the most powerful books I've read in a long time. We follow Kyungha, a woman in Seoul who is deeply struggling, as she travels to Jeju Island to help one of her oldest friends, Inseon, after a gruesome accident. A horrible snowstorm hits when Kyungha arrives to the island, and as she makes her way to her friend's house up in the mountains, dreams and reality blend, and she and Inseon relive one of the most brutal chapters of South Korea, Japan, and the US' history: the Jeju massacre after World War II.

I had never heard of the Jeju massacre before this book, and I found everything I learned almost unbearably sad, but also profoundly moving. Kang's prose is so visceral and immediate: Kyungha's meandering through the snow is deeply symbolic and compelling, and it's interwoven with Inseon recounting her mother and father's violent experiences during the massacre. It is a truly gorgeous story of generational trauma, the extreme depravity humans can inflict on each other, the enduring bonds of friendship, and what it takes to want to live despite enormous personal turmoil. I savored every word of this book, and it left me feeling so full despite chronicling absolutely harrowing acts of violence. I need to immediately read The Vegetarian now - Kang's writing is so impactful and gorgeous.

There must have been somebody she wanted to save? Isn’t that why she looked back? from We Do Not Part by Han King

Why do we dwell on the past? Why do we allow it to turn us into stone, unable to fully live, move on? Can art expel the demons that torment us? Does telling the story heal?

Han Kang’s new novel flails the veil of silence to remember a horrendous chapter in Korean history. The story of two women whose parents lived through the systematic mass murder of entire villages is as chilling as the blizzard of snow that envelopes the story.

Kyungha, depressed and in statis, is called to help her friend Inseon who is hospitalized. Kyungha travels through a snow storm to her friend’s home on the isolated island of Jeju. The surrealistic journey and experience at her friend’s house brings Kyungha to the intersection of dream and reality as she remembers the stories Inseon told of researching the horrors her parents lived through, their people exterminated in an effort to stop a few suspected communist partisans.

Shining a light on this history had to be a painful act of courage.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.

This is the perfect winter read for all fans of literary fiction and translated literature. I had started reading this one right before Kang's Nobel win was announced and I'm still thrilled I got to read it ahead of it's publication. The writing is obviously amazing. I wish I could speak to the translation, but I'll have to wait until some Korean speakers can attest to it. I found the book very readable but with previous controversy, I'm always very curious about Kang translations. While this one isn't very long, there is so much happening between the lines that it absolutely thrives as a slow read. Read it, think on it, discuss it... I absolutely can't wait to get my hands on a finished copy in January.

Much like Human Acts, we get another look at another dark part of Korean history little known to those outside of the country, the Jeju Uprising that led to the divide of north and south after Japanese occupation.

It’s an honorable act to try and talk about the hard things, things forgotten. Two sides to the same coin, you get dual narratives to the same story, pieced together to create the hope Han Kang has been writing towards. Always, and still here, there is a gauze that does not allow you to penetrate her text. Hazy. Vague. Impossible to touch. Much of the text runs like a fever dream. Fall asleep in a paragraph and you are unsure if you’re in reality, in the past, or in a dream. But here, for the first time, love, in all its fragility, musters up the courage in snow and rain to become of something. Something like hope. Something forgiving. And something to live for.

For fans of Han Kang, it’s an incredible work, one to look out for at the start of 2025.

That's my Nobel Prize winner!
I cannot begin to explain how this book impacted me. It was so raw and visceral and human, while being ethereal at the same time. I learned so much. I'd heard of Jeju Island, and I knew somethings about the history of Korea, but I had absolutely no idea about the atrocities mentioned here or to what extent they were committed.

We Do Not Part is both beautiful and haunting in its prose, using a harsh, snowy landscape to explore the traumatic history of both the Jeju Massacre (1948) and the Bodo League Massacre (1950).

An underlying device is the inability to determine which parts of the story are real, dream, memory, or hallucination. This is reflective of the generational trauma that is handed down in a society which otherwise keeps its atrocities under wraps for 60 years. Sometimes we truly don't get the answers we need.

Parts of this book were incredibly difficult to stomach, but Kang does an incredible, poetic job at telling this story through the lens of an artist and her friend.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the e-arc.

This was such an incredibly moving read for me. The story follows Kyungha, who rushes to Jeju Island after receiving a desperate message from her friend Inseon. As Kyungha fights her way through a brutal snowstorm to save Inseon’s pet, the book dives deep into themes of trauma, love, and the haunting weight of history.

I was struck by how beautifully Kang captures the cold, snowy landscape. The setting feels both serene and unforgiving, much like the emotional journey the characters go through. As Kyungha navigates the storm, I could feel the isolation and the sense of urgency, which made the story feel all the more intense. It’s a haunting backdrop for exploring the aftermath of the Korean War and the trauma that lingers long after the violence ends.

The bond between Kyungha and Inseon was so real and raw, and their struggle to reconnect and heal felt incredibly personal. The book isn’t easy to read—there are moments of real emotional weight, but that’s what makes it so powerful. Han Kang has a way of making difficult subjects feel intimate, letting the reader sit with the pain without being overwhelmed by it.

This novel will stay with me for a long time. Han Kang’s ability to write about trauma and memory with such grace is what makes her one of my favorite authors.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

We Do Not Part is a story of the friendship between two women Kyungha (a writer) and Inseon (an artist).
Both women have discussed collaborating on an art project (subsequently named We Do Not Part) for very different reasons. For Kyungha, the project is seen as a release for nightmare filled sleepless nights while for Inseon its an opportunity to help her friend and to share some devastating history she has learned of her own family and the atrocities inflicted upon them during the Jeju massacre. Kyungha receives a call from Inseon asking for her help.
There are so many layers to this story: family, friendship, love, and the devastating history of the Jeju massacre and the importance of keeping the names and memories of the victims alive. There is a lot of symbolism: Snow (purity, innocence, death) and shadows (subconscious, harsh light, uncertainty). Is what Kyungha experiences a dream or is this reality? Is she alive or is she dead?
At times this story is incredibly sad, at other times it represents hope through all of the love. You will be thinking about this book for a very long time.
Congratulations to Han Kang on winning the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House/Hogarth for the eARC.

What is a dream and what is reality? It can sometimes be hard to tell. This book takes a fictitious look at a real event, the Jeju massacre, and how it affected different generations of a family. There's definitely some poetic storytelling in this book, but at times it became disjointed and hard to follow (which may be a personal problem). The best part of the book for me was Kyungha's journey through the snowstorm which had such amazing imagery. Overall a book worth reading.

Another masterpiece by Han Kang. As she did in Human acts Kang uses her voice to expose another bloody event in Korean History, The second part of the novel is brilliant where the line between reality dreams and memory became blurred, the imaginary of snow, light darkness and shadows are mesmerizing and beautifully added to the setting of the novel.

I read recently that Han Kang is a chronicler of personal grief and historical trauma and this novel is a clear proof of that.

Dear Author,

This book educated me, entertained me, and caused deep emotional, needed reactions. Your poetic words took me into the dreamlike experience Kyungha had traveling to her friend's to rescue a lonely bird, it spoke to me, inundated my imagination with so much breathtaking snow. I pictured my mother fading into the falling snow as she drifts off into her memories, and I cannot go with her. I thoroughly enjoyed every second I spent with this story.

Thank you for writing this,

J.D.McCoughtry

Thank you, NetGalley and Random House | Hogarth, for allowing me the honor to read this book.

Hot off her Nobel Prize, Han Kang's latest novel We Do Not Part arrives in January in translation. This book deals with the intergenerational aftermath of a chapter in Korean history not discussed. Kyungha is a writer who is struggling with consistent nightmares of violence, but comes to her friend Inseon's aid after she is hospitalized after an accident. Inseon asks Kyungha to go to the small village where she lives in order to save her bird who she worries will not last long without food/water. Inseon, a documentarian turned carpenter moved back home to live with her mother who was suffering from advancing dementia. Kyungha must trek through a worsening snowstorm to get to the house in the woods, and she wonders if she will make it in time to save the bird (or herself). Much of the latter half of the book charts a murky boundary between dreams and reality where the history of the village is revealed and the tragic violence that occurred there. Interspersed are passages from the documentary Inseon worked on about the violence and her mother's recollections of it.

Some of the focus on unimaginable violence here is reminiscent of Kang's early book Human Acts. At times I struggled with orienting myself in the latter portions of the book, but the imagery the author portrays is moving and this is a thought-provoking look at trauma.

Thank you to Hogarth via NetGalley for the advance reader copy in exchange for honest review.

Han Kang is a master at mixing poetry and trauma. Her prose in this were hauntingly beautiful and she is one of my favorite authors of all time.

Beautifully written, this is a powerful story that takes the reader on an unsettling journey in a snowy village of Jeju Island, South Korea.

Kyungha-ya started to have violent nightmares in 2012 of killings and torture from the past. She had trouble sleeping. She suffered from migraine headaches and then stomach spasms. This caused major anxiety. She took painkillers and kept social affairs to a minimum.

Two years later, her book was published: a dark and dreaded massacre killing thousands. It was her hope that this would help with her dreaded health issues. She worked closely over 20 years with a photographer on assignments. Inseon was about the same age with a similar outlook of life. And then one afternoon, she received a confusing text message from her friend.

Inseon was in the hospital and needed her help. There wasn’t a lot of information given to her and she could only visualize the worse. And that’s when she started next on a trek in the freezing snow to Inseon’s village, unlike any other place.

While it seems like the story would center around the main character, Kyungha, it was almost all about the ancestors of Inseon from the mountainous village of Jeju. It’s filled with unimaginable reports that many of us have never heard of before from the days of a massacre in 1948 where the US Military was involved. It makes one immediately Google how 30,000 civilians were killed.

The author portrays the beauty of snow and at the same time, there is the excruciating harshness it can impose. And then there’s another part with the love of birds as pets and how they are cared for by owners. While it’s written well that brings attention to the past, it’s heartbreaking and not easy to read. This is a story that stays with you with distressing images.

My thanks to Random House and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this book with an expected release date of January 21, 2025.

Translated from the original language of 2024 Nobel prize winner in literature, Han Kang, this is a beautifully written, lyrical, symbolic, heartbreaking story. In modern times, there is the friendship of Kyungha and Inseon. There is also the historical telling of the massacre following the uprising on Jeju Island beginning in 1948. Following a scorched earth policy, at least 30,000 people were slaughtered on the island.

The beginning of the book was a bit difficult to negotiate with its dreamlike, surreal quality. But as the story of Inseon's research into the massacre and its effects on her family unfolded, it was riveting.
This is a tale of horror, resilience, intergenerational trauma and of never forgetting.

I have mixed feelings about this one. This was hard work for me, and I felt a half-step behind the whole way, like I was missing something. Whether it was Korean words or references that were unfamiliar, or just a different phraseology, I felt out of step. That in no way took away from the style of writing, which was lyrical and inventive. I wish I had more of an understanding about the historic events referenced (which I did do some outside research on while reading), maybe that would have cleared some things up for me.

All in all, this was an interesting read, but one I didn't totally connect with or appreciate more.

I received a complimentary copy of the novel from the publisher and NetGalley, and my review is being left freely.

Here is another one of Han Kang's books that inspires a passionate review and recommendation, but leaves me gripped with mournful introspection.

We Do Not Part is an ode to friendship, sisterhood, motherhood, and the circular remembrances that connect us to both suffering and survival. The book is divided into three parts, detailing (on the surface) the story of a troubled young woman who travels to Jeju Island to save her injured friend's beloved pet bird, and ends up unpacking the gruesome circumstances of the Jeju 4.3 Massacre of 1948. Han Kang is well-versed in recounting tragedies and massacres that are forgotten by history (at least outside Korea) in beautiful, poetic, evocative prose. Her writing goes beyond evocative to hypnotic in this work, with the veil between reality and dreams drawn back in an experimental narrative that could have become nonsensical quickly but ended up poignant as it tied together all the threads of the story. Ultimately, the story pierced through my heart, and I know this is one I would go beyond recommending to others. I know I will reread this someday and try to divine meaning through its superbly translated text again.

4.5/5 stars rounded up. A compelling read, repetitive at times, hard-hitting at times. I might like this better than Human Acts, and both can be read as companion novels. No wonder these novels resulted in a Nobel for the author.

Thanks to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group for a copy of the ARC in exchange for an honest review! We Do Not Part is being published in the US on Jan 21, 2025.

Maybe Han Kang's best novel yet? It's hard to say because I've lived in Jeju for over 10 years, so this book really resonated with me personally. But this novel definitely has some of Kang's most lyrical, beautiful prose yet. It brings all the best aspects of her (previously translated into English) novels and combines them into one perfect concoction. That being said, this is a Han Kang novel after all, so be forewarned this book is crushingly sad (I seem to be on an extremely bleak run of reading lately).

One note about the translation I have is that there are a lot of romanizations of Korean words in this book that I don't think the average western reader will know what they mean; especially things like doshirak, ondol, maru. There are even Jeju dialect romanizations of the Korean word for mom and dad, which I imagine aren't really that apparent unless you already speak Korean (which I do). I kind of get it for some of the words where there isn't really a direct one-word English equivalent (the aforementioned maru and ondol for example), but I think they should have just broken down and added a short appendix at the back of the book if they were so attached to only translating things word for word. And again, this isn't a problem for me as I already know what all these words mean, but I'm just imagining recommending this to family members or friends and I know they would be pretty confused at times.

But this is just an uncorrected proof I'm reviewing, so maybe this will be revised or that appendix will be added. However, that doesn't generally seem to be the case in past experiences I have with this sort of thing.

If any element dominates Kang’s novel, it is air. Things born by air, birds, snow, ash, smoke, the illusion of flame rising were it not held down by some object, such as wood or a candle wick, “… the tangible sensation I had that the footnote I was reading … was emitting its own light.’ light and shadows cast like fishing nets from the flame tip on the candle across the walls and ceiling … ‘Inseon stands, her shadow soaring …”

Inseon, the documentary photographer and installation artist, lives with physical pain from her severed fingers and psychological pain from the memory and narratives of her past, the massacre of a village where her family lived. And died. You can look up the facts of the Jeju uprising online. From her hospital bed, Inseon summons her friend Kyungha to undertake for her a journey, one of many journeys in this book, a journey that turns out as rigorous as some story written by Jack London.

Before her call from Inseon, Kyungha was decompressing, having finished a book about a nameless Massacre of which she was possibly a survivor. Fallen in a state of not caring whether she lives, her existence becomes a slow spiraling toward the desire of suicide. From her austere dreams during that period, she envisioned a work of installation art in a forest and contacts Inseon to help her. Pain and sorrow, Massacres and art, bring these two women together in an unimaginable alliance.

South Korea has had its share of massacres, three of them appear in fiction, two of them, Jeju (1948) and the Gwangju uprising (1980), mentioned by Kang, the latter the subject of her Human Acts. The third, the No Gun Ri Massacre of Korean refugees by the United States military in the Korean War (1950).

I don’t speak or write Korean, but I do know how to read a literary text in English. The translation by the collaboration of E Yeawon and Paige Morris shows a novel presented in English with literary complexities and more symbolic chains than the partial elemental chain I mentioned above. I may not feel like I’m in South Korea, but thanks to Yeawon and Morris, my wits were engaged in reading another brilliant novel by Han Kang.

And thank you to Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley for an advanced readers copy.