𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕡𝕣𝕠𝕓𝕝𝕖𝕞 𝕨𝕚𝕥𝕙 ‘𝕙𝕒𝕟’ 한 恨

As a Korean resident of the United States, I have been both amazed and
bewildered by the recent success of Korean popular culture in the
country. When I first came to the US in the mid-1980s, despite South
Korea’s significant economic advances of the previous decades, most
Americans I met still had the impression of my homeland as an
impoverished third-world country that made cheap but shabby goods,
often placing it in Southeast Asia, and sometimes confusing it with
Vietnam.

But now, my students at the Midwestern university where I teach

listen avidly to K-pop music (I still get startled when I turn on the radio to
a local station and hear the singing of Korean lyrics), while many of my
American friends are enthusiastic consumers of K-dramas. In 2020, the
Korean film Parasite (2019) was nominated for six Academy Awards, out
of which it won four, including Best Picture, the first foreign-language film
to do so. In the following year, a movie about Korean Americans in
1980s Arkansas, Minari(2020), was also nominated for six awards, with
the veteran actress Youn Yuh-Jung, a familiar figure to South Koreans,
winning best Supporting Actress. In 2021, the television show Squid
Game became the most-watched programme on Netflix in the US and in
many other countries. I myself may have benefited from this
development in a modest way, as the Penguin Classics edition of my
translation of the Joseon dynasty novel The Story of Hong
Gildong(2016) — the narrative of an outlaw hero comparable to Robin-
hood and the subject of a number of films and K-dramas— sold
surprisingly well, and became required reading in many college and
high- school classes.

These works have increased interest in Korean culture in general,

creating opportunities for Korean American writers to emerge as
explicators of all things Korean. In their writings, the concept of Han has
been invoked as crucial to understanding the Korean character, as well
as its culture and art. A supposedly untranslatable term, it denotes a
uniquely Korean sense of profound sorrow, regret, resentment, rage and
other negative emotions that are all bound up inside an individual as well
as the people as a whole. It has been claimed that modern Koreans
inherited it from deep tradition, as a collective emotional memory of their
ancestors’ experiences of historical traumas, including many foreign
invasions throughout the centuries. Han has frequently been mentioned
in the US media too.

An early example is a 2003 episode of the TV show The West Wing

that is titled ‘Han’, involving a visiting North Korean pianist who seeks to
defect to the US. When thwarted from the course, the show explains,
he’s filled with Han, ‘a sadness so deep that no tears can come’. The
Late Anthony Bourdain, in his cooking and travel show parts Unknown
(2013-18), said that ‘To take a peek into the dark heart of the Korean
Psyche.. it helps tom get familiar with Han… [it’s a] concept that for non-
Koreans can be difficult to fully grasp.’ The concept was also invoked in
magazine reviews of Parasite and Squid Game, though the word was
never used directly.

When interpreters of Korean cultural products such as films and Tv

shows mention Han, they are referring to the works’ intense emotionality,
especially the feelings of sorrow, regret, resentment and rage associated
with the concept. Parasite, for instance, begins with a family of swindlers
who target a rich family, but their plot turns deadly with the explosion of
seething anger from class resentment. Squid game features the sad
desperation of people whose lives are in such shambles that they
willingly risk death in a series of sadistic games for a slim chance at
salvation. Among other popular Korean film, one could point to the
sorrow and rage of the inexplicably imprisoned man in Oldboy(2003), the
abused and traumatised wife in Lady Vengeance (2005), the colonial
subjects having to humble themselves before their Japanese masters
and their collaborators in The Handmaiden(2016), and the poor youth
who loses the girl he loves to a rich man in Burning(2018).

Seen from the perspective of Han, such emotions seem to be the

common theme running throughout all the works. The notion is a
questionable one, yet, because Han has become the unavoidable go-to
term in explicating all things Korean, it is important to explore its exact
origin and meanings. And it is ultimately necessary to ask whether it is
indeed a useful term in understanding Korean culture.

For much of the 20th century, Han has played a significant role in
the self-definition of Koreans. It became a particularly important culture
concept starting in the 1960s when South Korea embarked on a
concerted effort to overcome the tragedies of the recent past:
colonisation by the Empire of Japan from 1910 to 1945; the forced
division of the country into North and South following the defeat of Japan
in the Second World War; and the devastation of the Korean War(1950-
53). Even after South Korea took its place on the global stage as an
emerging economic powerhouse, the stigma of Han remained. Han not
only pointed to all the sorrow and rage from the traumas inflicted on the
people by the historic events, but also described the unique ways in
which they carried and dealt with the experiences. Ultimately, Han came
to signify a kind of Korean exceptionalism defined by strength and
resilience in the face of inherent sadness and pain.

The trope of Han took powerful hold of the Korean imagination. In

the cultural realm, major literary figures such as the novelist Park
Kyongni (1926-2008) and the poet Ko Un(1933-), among many others
claimed Han to be the central aesthetic principle in Korean art and
literature, applicable even to popular media products such as TV dramas
and film. When explaining the termite non-Koreans, it became common
place to insist that one could not understand the people without
comprehending Han, while also claiming that only Korean could truly
grasp it.

The influence of Han reached a pinnacle with the release of the film
Seopyeonje(1993) by the celebrated director Im Kwon-taek, about
practitioners of the traditional singing/storytelling art of pansori, a work
replete with the aesthetics of Han. The movie was a domestic
blockbuster, the highest grossing film up to that time, but it also proved
to be the last hurrah of Han’s cultural significance.

The idea of Han has undergone a significant decline in cultural

importance in South Korea itself. When a cultural idea is transmitted
from a country (South Korea) to emigrants from that place to another
land (Korean Americans), there is an inevitable lag as well asa
translation process that sometimes results in distortions. This often
occurs across generations, when a notion is passed down to those who
are fluent in the language of their ancestry. The case of Han provides a
good example of this process.

In recent years, many Korean Americans have taken up the idea to

define their identity and describe their life experiences and heritage.
They say Han explains Korean character and culture in mainstream
media. And the concept shows up frequently in fiction written by Korean
Americans, most recently in Patricia Park’s novel Re Jane (2015), which
reimagines the story of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847) in
contemporary New York City with a Korean American protagonist. In
the work, the ‘untranslatable’ Han is characterised as sensation of a
‘fiery anguish roiling in the blood, the result of being wronged’. In Jay
Caspian Kang’s nonfiction book The Loneliest Americans (2021), on the
status of Asian Americans in US society and culture, Han is described as
a ‘Korean condition in which the afflicted convinces himself that the
world has turned its back on him…’

Yet few Korean American seem aware that the idea of Han has
undergone a significant decline in cultural importance in South Korea
itself since the late 1990s, now to the point of irrelevance. With the
achievement of prosperity and democracy, the notion of an essential
character defined by a profound sorrow from trauma and unrealised
potential no longer seems appropriate. Of course, the people of the
country experience economic disparity, as brilliantly allegorised in
Parasite and Squid game, and gender inequality, as excruciatingly
detailed in Cho Nam- Joe’s controversial feminist novel Kim Jiyoung,
Born 1982 (2016; English translation 2020). They are cognizant of the
endless crisis situation with North Korea, along with quality-of-life issues
stemming from the competitive, workaholic culture (sometimes referred
to as ‘Hell Joseon’).

But given the astounding economic, political and social

achievements of the recent past, South Korean people no longer feel
that they are perennially condemned as the passive victims of history.
The word Han is still mentioned occasionally in popular culture and used
in colloquial language, notably in reference to the so-called ‘comfort
women’, victims of sexual slavery by the Japanese military during the
Second World War. For most contemporary South Koreans, however,
the larger idea of Han as a defining characteristics feels increasingly like
a retrograde notion from the past. So they are likely to be taken aback
that Korean Americans are still using the term to explain contemporary
Korean culture to Americans.

The modern irrelevance of Han is hardly the main reason to pause

before invoking it yet again, however. Research into the concept’s origin
reveals a deeply troubling history, one that has been implicated in
Japanese imperial ideology, ethnonationalism and sexist reaction to the
advancement of women’s rights.

Looking over the historical origin of Han, I am immediately struck by

the non-Korean source of both the word and its significance. Since
ancient times, Koreans have assimilated Chinese culture into their own,
including numerous words in their language. Scholars have estimated
that as much as 60 per cent of Korean words are of Chinese origin
(Sino-Korean), though only about 35 per cent are widely used in
everyday language. Han is derived from hen (恨) which is in common
usage in modern Chinese with the same general meanings of
‘resentment’ (yuan hen, 怨恨), ‘hatred’ (chosen, 仇恨), and ‘regret’ (huihen,
悔恨). Of course, its Sinitic origin does not disqualify it as a Korean word,
same as numerous English words are of medieval French origin, but it is
somewhat ironic that a Sino-Korean term is thought to signify a concept
so quintessentially and uniquely Korean. In addition, there is not a single
piece of evidence that anyone prior to the 20th century thought that word
held some special meaning for the Korean character. In other words, the
notion that Koreans are essentially a people of Han was constructed
entirely in the modern era.

The idea itself has roots in the Japanese imperial ideology that was
used to justify the subjugation and exploitation of Koreans during the
colonial era. With the expansion of the takeover of Korea came up with
the notion of noise ittai (literally, ‘Japan and Korea, One Body’). It was
based on the historical myth that the Japanese and Korean people came
from the same ethnic stock, but Japan was able to advance through the
natural stages of a civilisation’s development, ultimately reaching
modernity, while Korea stagnated due to the backward and corrupt
tyranny of its ruling class with its slavish devotion to Chinese culture. It
was the duty of the Japanese to come to the aid of their unfortunate
cousins and civilise them through imperial tutelage. The idea has its
roots in Western theories of racial essentialism that the Japanese
adopted, adjusted and then utilised for their own purpose. And despite
the seemingly benevolent veneer of naisen ittai, it became the basis of
an overt and virulent racism toward the Korean subjects of the empire.

In the modern era, the term Han was utilised in praising women who
bear their sorrow in silence. If there is one person who could be
identified as the father of what would be later be labelled Han, it is not a
Korean but the Japanese artist and art theorist Yanagi Muneyoshi(1889-
1961). Yanagi disliked the impact of modernisation and industrialisation
on art and the general culture of Japan. While he was a vociferous anti-
imperialist who opposed the domination of Korea, he inadvertently
contributed to the imperial project by buying into the historical myth of
naisen ittai and elaborating on the essential sorrow of the Korean people
from their sorry condition. Because Korea was such a backward and
primitive place, its common people produced works(mainly pottery) of
unrefined but authentic beauty that were filled with profound sadness. As
elaborated in his essay Chosen no bijutsu or ‘Korean Art’(1922), a
significant part of the misfortunes of the Korean people came from
repeated invasions of the peninsula by foreign powers over the
centuries. Artisans took all the negative feelings from their sufferings and
channelled them into art, creating a sublime effect he called the ‘beauty
of sorrow’ (hiai no bi). And so Yanagi was the first to fully articulate the
notion of Koreans as a people defined by their sadness.

The idea of a Korean character shaped by foreign invasions is

another modern myth, one still circulating today. The Korean Peninsula
was indeed subject to a series of terrible calamities through the 20th
century, starting with colonisation by Japan in 1910. But in the previous
period of the Joseon dynasty(1392-1910), during its more than 500- year
span, it experienced just two major foreign invasions— by the Japanese
in 1592-98, and by the Manchus in 1627 and 1636. While those events
were no doubt terrible and traumatic, two such events in 500 years
hardly constitute ‘constant invasions’. By comparison, one could look at
how many times the Italian peninsula was invaded since the 14th
century, or Poland or India, for that matter.

Korean nationalists, who fought for independence during the

colonial era and then worked to build a new nation after liberation, were
modernisers who had no interest in restoring the old order of monarchy
and the yangban aristocracy. In their critique of the ruling class of the
Joseon dynasty, it made ideological sense for them to adopt the imperial
narrative of the stagnant backwardness of the country before
colonisation. They even took up Yanagi’s notion of the deeply ingrained
sadness of the Korean people caused by living under the tyranny and
corruption of their feudal masters.

While Yanagi used the term hiai(悲哀,’sorrow’), Korean nationalists

favoured han(한),a rather obscure word in the Joseon dynasty that began
to appear with some frequency during the colonial period. Starting in the
1960s, intellectuals and artists went even further, elevating the notion as
the true signifier of the essential Korean character and culture. And so
Korean culture, Korean art, Korean literature, Korean personality and
Korean national characteristics all came to be explicated in terms of han.

In the 1970s, the idea became entrenched, taking on troubling

gender implications as well. Scholars of imperial ideology such as Anne
McClintock have pointed out that the colonial subject is consistently
feminised as weak, irrational, primitive, childlike and unintelligent,
needing the strong and rational rule of their masculine imperial masters.
Once the Japanese who espoused the idea left the peninsula and
Koreans adopted the notion that their people were defined by Han, the
concept was literally feminised through the idea that women were the
exemplary carriers. This was expressed in the aestheticisation of
women’s sorrow, which became a common trope in the culture.

A few years ago I translated a Joseon dynasty novel entitled Record

of the Virtue of Queen Inhyeon, Lady Min, which is loosely based on
events that occurred in the royal court in the 17th century, involving a
love triangle of the King. His virtuous wife and his evil concubine who
schemes to take the place of the Queen. I explicated the story in terms
of how, in a patriarchal society, a woman is lauded for her passive
acceptance of suffering through her loyalty to male authority figures,
while a woman who seeks to better her lot through self-assertion and the
pursuit of ambitions is vilified as a nefarious upstart. With the persistence
of the idea in the modern era, the term Han was utilised in praising
women who bear their sorrow in silence.

Yet complaining women for accepting their subordinate position in

society has become inappropriate in today’s South Korea, where women
have access to education and a majority of them choose to pursue their
ambitions through work. Consequently, the use of Han for the advocacy
of a virulent and increasingly retrograde sexism became one of the
reasons for its decline. As a feminist scholar once told me: ‘For feminism
in Korea to thrive, han must die.’ What the presentment calls for is the
aestheticisation of the beauty of women’s healing, resistance and
empowerment.

When a word has a problematic history, it’s a important to take note.

Like Han, the idea of ‘hysteria’ underwent a number of significant
chances over time. In its ancient Greco-Egyptian conception, it was
described as a woman’s illness resulting from the detachment of the
womb. The term was revived in the early modern period as a form of
profound melancholia. By the late 19th century, it had taken an ugly turn.
In that era, the French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot sought a
physiological cause for abnormal behaviour that ranged from depression
and violent acting out to paralysis and catatonia. Although Charcot
thought that both men and women could be subjected to hysteria, it was
generally coded as feminine. Finally, Charcot’s student, Sigmund Freud,
denied the physiological basis of hysteria, turning it into a wholly
psychological condition.

In the course of the 20th century, both the medical and

psychological establishments have rejected hysteria as a diagnostic
term. They’ve universally noted the great suffering that the label has
caused to countless patients, the vast majority of them women, who
were diagnosed as hysterics and subjected to all manner of intrusive,
abusive and damaging ‘treatments’. Although still in colloquial use today,
mainly in the form of ‘mass hysteria’, those who are cognisant of its
history regard ‘hysteria’ as a toxic term tainted by its troubling history, its
misogyny and the damage its done writ large.

The history of Han is as problematic as that of ‘hysteria’, which begs

the question of why anyone aware of its past would want to persist in its
use, even through a redefinition that rejects its imperialist, racist,
ethnonationalist and sexist legacy. Ever since Japanese propagandists
invented the notion of Koreans as a people defined by their essential
sorrow, so many people have attached so many disparate meanings to it
that it has become a confused mishmash of ideas, in the same way that
‘hysteria’ became a meaningless term signifying any person, usually a
woman, who displays extreme emotional behaviour.

Some people insist that Han is a uniquely Korean idea that only
Koreans can truly grasp. Yet it is about as useful at explaining everything
Korean as the term ‘rugged individualism’ is at explaining everything
American or the ‘Samurai’ is in capturing all that is Japanese. It is true
that all the calamities and traumas of the modern era have provided
Koreans with a great well of powerful emotional experiences from which
to draw. But intense emotionality is hardly unique to Korean narratives,
and the notion of a specific kind of sorrow/regret/frustration/rage that
only Koreans can feel is absurd.

The key to understanding the success of Korean popular culture

lies, then, in its hybrid nature. So if Han is an idea that is too vague and
incoherent to explain the spirit of modern Korean films and TV shows,
what accounts for their global popularity? The attraction, I believe, lies in
a hybrid approach to cultural creation at which South Koreans have
become particularly adapt while striving for domestic wealth and respect
abroad.

When the Korean War ended in 1953, South Korea —a small

country with no valuable natural resources to speak of— was one of the
poorest nations in the world, with urban and industrial centres flattened
by bombs and people traumatised by division and war. From that dire
situation, the only way the country could hope to achieve a measure of
prosperity was through rapid industrialisation and participation in global
trade. The endeavour began in earnest in the 1960s, under corporatist
dictatorships and upon the backs of the labouring class. In the
beginning, South Korea did make cheap and shabby goods for export
but, by the 1980s, there was a concerned effort to export Korean cultural
products.

During the 1990s, a commonly heard phrase related to the

enterprise was ‘What is most Korean is most global’, meaning that the
key to successfully introducing Korean culture abroad was not through
slavish imitation of foreign art but offering what was authentically
Korean. It turned out that the formula was only half right. The supposedly
quintessential Korean film and domestic blockbuster Seopyeonje failed
to garner much interest abroad.

The success of Korean popular culture thereafter lay in offering

narratives of local interest to audiences abroad. That was accomplished
by emphasising universal themes such as love across forbidden
boundaries or frustration at social inequity, and presenting them through
the mastery of cutting-edge filming and narrative techniques. So Parasite
and Squid Game are about class conflict in contemporary South Korea,
but their creators’ familiarity with the conventions of Western media
allowed them to tell the stories in ways that audiences of any capitalist
country could comprehend and even identify with. Likewise, the films
The Host (2006) and Train to Busan (2016) successfully replicated the
western genre of the monster or zombie movie but in Korean settings
and featuring Korean themes.

In the case of Train to Busan, about people on a train trying to

survive a zombie outbreak, the critique of selfishness and loss of
community is crystal clear. International viewers not only enjoyed the
narrative but also the novelty of a foreign setting. Western viewers
responded to the idea of survival based on a sense of community, rather
than needing an individual to prevail. In other words, what made these
films attractive to non-Koreans was not the mere replication of the
western genre conventions but the mixing of Korean aesthetics with
Western ones. It would be hard to argue that their popularity with
American viewers had anything to do with emotions associated with
Han.

The key to understanding the success of Korean popular culture

lies, then, in its hybrid nature, of featuring Korean and Western as well
as international elements, creating a captivating effect of being familiar
but also novel/alien/foreign at the same time. South Koreans have
proven to be particularly adapt at this approach because finding a place
for their country’s goods in the global market through adaptation was
something that they have had to do from the beginning of its effort to
achieve domestic prosperity and international respect.
 Recently, a number of Korean American writers have written
beautifully about what Han has meant to them, especially in the
construction of their identity as Korean Americans. But they have largely
avoided the troubling historical origins and the problematic uses the term
has had in the past. I invite people to consider the full story so that they
can make informed decisions about whether the term is worth preserving
as anything other than a historical artefact that is best left in the past.

**
————————————————————————————————
——————————————**