Auzy’s Reviews > Human Acts > Status Update

DH's mom came, she urges him to come home as the army will be reentering the city. DH says he will come back home once they've closed up. She says that he better and they will all have dinner together.

Jin-su says to leave before 6. It's been shared that the soldiers will come that very night. Dong-ho asks who will watch over the people? "What harm could the dead possibly do them?"

There's a lady in the room who said she won't leave her baby. The lady reminded DH of Jeong-mi.

DH wonders about Jeong-mi, & how she would look at every nook and cranny just to find her brother, Jeong-dae.

Jeong-dae has an older sister, Jeong-mi. They moved into the same annex as Dong-ho 2 years ago. She is remarkably stubborn, hardworking, and protective. She pushes herself to her limits working in a factory to help fund her brother’s education, sacrificing her own schooling. She asked DH for textbooks one night as she plans to go for night classes.

DH has a crush on her.

Dong-ho's "missing" friend, Jeong-dae, is actually dead, & DH witnessed it. What DH claimed initially about volunteering because he's looking for a friend as well, is just survivor's guilt.

Eon-sook gave Dong-ho food, Seon-ju asked about his friend later on (Jeong-dae)

Dong-ho (DH) has 2 other brothers
DH was visited by his mother & middle brother, and he warned DH that he might get killed. DH claims he won't and he will come home after helping out.

Narrator of this chapter - Dong-ho
DH recalls the previous Sunday, when it all started. He witnessed a couple, the man killed, the woman dragged by the hair. Luckily, he was at an alley, hidden from the armed soldiers.

Had times not changed so sudden, he would have slept in today before meeting a friend, Jeong-dae for badminton.

"a mass rally of corpses who were all there by prearrangement, whose only action was the production of that horrible putrid smell"

more & more bodies come

Protagonist recalls the death of maternal grandma who died last winter

Gwangju Uprising was a 1980 pro-democracy protest in South Korea that was brutally crushed by military tanks and troops, leaving hundreds of civilians dead.

The story starts with the aftermath, opening in a temporary mortuary set up where lines of mutilated civilian bodies lie in wooden boxes, waiting for families to identify them.

The boy - Narrator/Reader
Eun-sook
Seon-ju
Jin-su
^ Volunteers for the mortuary