The story of Mr. Han
The Story of Mr. Han (Kor. 한씨 연대기 , Han-ssi yeondaegi ) is a short novel by the South Korean writer Hwang Sok-yong , published in 1970. Based on the life of the fictional doctor Han Yongdok, the division of Korea and its effects on the Affected people addressed. The work is considered to be a key novel in South Korean literature of the 20th century.
content
The book begins with a description of an apartment building in a South Korean city in the early 1970s. In addition to the other residents, an old man lives in the house, who only moved in a few years ago and who annoys the other residents because of his drunkenness and his taciturn demeanor. The reader only learns in the course of the plot that he is the former doctor Han Yongdok. Eventually the old man falls into an unconscious state and dies soon after. Only three people appear at his funeral, who are his daughter, his friend and his sister, with whom he has not had contact for years.
The story continues in the time of the beginning Korean War . Han Yongdok is a university professor and doctor at Pyongyang University Hospital . Without speaking out openly against communist rule, he is suspected because of his unclear attitude. Han opposes the party's directive to give priority to party members who are housed in a separate ward. In direct protest from his superiors, he saves a wounded girl. Since his friend Professor Soh is also fleeing from the north, Han is arrested and is said to be executed during a mass execution shortly before the UN troops take Pyongyang. By chance he survives, but his father dies during the purges.
During the following winter he decides to move south with his family. Before crossing the Taedong-gang , Han decides to leave the rest of his family behind and to catch up with them shortly. Only his eldest son accompanies him south. Shortly after his arrival, he was imprisoned by the army for a few months because he had illegally approached a prisoner of war camp several times in the hope of finding his son there, whom he must have lost in the meantime without any explicit description in the novel. Through his friend Soh, he comes into contact with his sister Yongsuk, who lives in the south. On the advice of Yongsuk, he married again, as the ceasefire has now come into force and the division of the country has been sealed for an indefinite period.
Han begins to work in a private doctor's office, owned by Bak, who runs it without medical training or a license. Due to a conflict over the working methods of the practice, Bak denounced Han as a North Korean spy. Han is arrested and tortured by the secret service. Attempts by his sister to obtain his release by bribing a former acquaintance named Min Sangho, who also works for the secret service, are unsuccessful. Only after months in which Han persistently refuses to confirm the allegations made against him is he acquitted, but shortly thereafter sentenced to imprisonment for a doctor's mistake attributed to him by Bak. The rest of his life is only briefly outlined. Han returns to his family, begins to drink and gets into debt. Eventually he leaves his family, whereupon his wife remarries.
The book ends with a look at Hans's daughter Hyeja, who emerged from his new connection in the south. She barely knows her father and comes reluctantly when she learns of his death.
people
Han Yongdok is a stubborn and unconditionally honest character who perishes under the consequences of being separated from his family and other unfortunate circumstances in the wake of the partition of Korea. He feels it is a great shame to be a burden to his sister in the south. After initial reluctance, he accepted the work in Bak's practice, only to repeatedly come into conflict with Bak about his working methods.
As Hans Freund, Soh Hakjun is a more soothing and pragmatic man. He escapes Pyongyang alone after trying to convince Han to come with him. What he values most about Han is his honesty, but sharply condemns his stubbornness.
Han Yongsuk lost her husband in the war and now has to feed her three children themselves. Nevertheless, she is strongly committed to the release of her brother and shows almost as much stubbornness in dealing with the authorities as Yongdok.
Form of representation
Hwang Sok-yong himself described his work as a chronicle rather than a novel . In terms of subject matter, the story of Mr. Han is one of Hwang's complete works. The focus is on the little people who are helplessly exposed to political events. This topic is brought to the fore by a clear, powerful-looking language in which exactness in expression goes hand in hand with any vagueness of symbolic representation. The restriction to the effects of the war circumstances on private life is supported by the renouncement of analytical or politically colored representations.
The death of Han Yongdok in exile in his own country, viewed rather suspiciously as a person from the north, serves as a framework and at the same time perhaps as a symbolic background for the entire book.
background
The story of Mr. Han was published by Hwang Sok-yong in 1970, initially as a serialized novel in a magazine. It was published in book form in 1972. It was a great success, which was shown in repeated editions. In particular, the separation scene of the family before the planned crossing of the Taedong-gang is seen by Korean literary critics as one of the most beautiful places in modern South Korean literature.
The story of Mr. Han can partly be read as an autobiographical work. Hwang Sok-yong's family moved from Pyongyang to the south in the late 1940s. Hwang's maternal uncle was also a doctor like Han Yongdok, who, like Hwang's character, died in poverty. The character Han Yongsuk bears the traits of Hwang's mother, who, having fled the north, always wanted to return to the north.
literature
Hwang Sok-yong: The story of Mr. Han (with interpretive epilogue) dtv, Munich 2005 ISBN 3-423-24488-7