What is Han Kang's central idea about the body?
The body, for me, is not merely a vessel but a repository of memory, a site where history and trauma are inscribed. It remembers what the mind attempts to suppress. In 'Human Acts,' for instance, the physical suffering and the very violation of flesh become a testament to the brutality of the Gwangju Uprising. The body bears witness. It can be a site of profound oppression, subjected to external forces, but it can also be a locus of resistance, a space where one can reclaim agency through profound, sometimes terrifying, acts of self-definition, even if that means transforming into something other than human.