Human Acts

Dong-ho’s mother thinks she sees Dong-ho again outside her house, still a middle-school boy. She chases after him but can’t find him; she addresses him as “you,” telling him about her journey home. That summer, there is torrential rain that creates some potholes, so new tarmac is poured over the road. Dong-ho’s mother repeatedly goes and stands on the new tarmac, feeling it warm her from a chill that has settled into her body, but also hoping to catch another glimpse of Dong-ho.

But then, Dong-ho’s mother acknowledges the impossibility of this, remembering how she prepared his body for burial. Her middle son threatened to get revenge after his death, but she told him that if anything happened to him, she would die. Dong-ho’s death weighs heavily on his middle brother, aging him before his time. The eldest brother blamed the middle brother for failing to bring Dong-ho home, severing the relationship between the two.

Thinking back to her last conversation with Dong-ho, Dong-ho’s mother wonders why she believed his reassurance to her that he would be home in time for dinner. She also remembers Dong-ho’s friendship with Jeong-dae, celebrating their closeness: “There was something comforting about the sight of you and Jeong-dae heading off to school in your identical uniforms, side by side like two peas in a pod” (189). She wonders what became of Jeong-dae and his sister, Jeong-mi. Dong-ho’s mother admits that sometimes she thinks if they’d never rented the annex out, then Dong-ho would have never gone searching for Jeong-dae; she thinks she is to blame for her son’s death.

After Dong-ho’s death, his mother attended meetings for bereaved families until she became too feeble for them. When the president visited Gwangju, the group donned traditional mourning clothes and showed up to protest, and were all taken to the police station. A group of young protestors was brought in shortly after. While they were detained, Dong-ho’s mother climbed up on a table and demanded to know what crime she’d committed. Upon seeing a photograph of the president hanging on the wall, she smashed it, cutting her foot in the process. At the hospital, she climbed onto the roof and unfurled her banner reading “Chun Doo-hwan, you murdered my son. Let’s tear that blood-thirsty butcher to pieces” (193), holding it until the police carried her back down to her room.

Finally, Dong-ho’s mother thinks of Dong-ho’s early days of life: The way he nursed better than her other two sons, and crawled everywhere once he was mobile, remembering days of nursing him through illness and watching him eat watermelon. Her final memory is of one afternoon walking along the road in the hot sunshine, trying to pull Dong-ho into the shade, and Dong-ho continually pulling her back into the light.