Human Acts

Written in second-person perspective, this chapter follows Seon-ju, exploring her difficult life. It alternates between her present-day life as a 42-year-old woman, her memories, and her interior thoughts and questions. Seon-ju works as a transcriber for an environmental group. She has a reoccurring dream of standing in the light of a streetlamp, with darkness surrounding her. She must stay perfectly still because she does not know what dangers await in the darkness. Due to her trauma and nightmares, Seon-ju prefers sleeping alone. She had one failed marriage, and feels repulsed by and fearful of men.

In the opening section, Seon-ju remembers a night when she was at Seong-hee’s house. Seong-hee said the moon was called the “eye of the night” (141), and this image frightened Seon-ju. She also remembers factory work she did as a teenager. The labor conditions were terrible: 15-hour work days, sexual harassment, half the wages of men. This job is where she first met Seong-hee, who held meetings for women to study hanja (Chinese characters) and listen to labor lectures, repeating that “…we are noble. As noble as anyone else” (159). When the labor union voted against the company-dominated union, strikebreakers and police came to detain the instigators.