This book was a wild ride - a bit of a fever dream where it was hard to tell what was real and what was imagined. It almost felt like two books in one. The first part of the book really set the stage to get Kyungha down to Jeju Island to deal with the home and pet of her friend who was in the hospital. The second part of the book is where reality and dreams get a little murky -- there's a big snowstorm, and all of a sudden Inseon is back at the home (a ghost? real? who knows) showing and explaining important parts of her family's and the island's history to Kyungha. The historical details of Jeju Island in the Korean war time come to light in Inseon's retelling. I will say, the writing was beautiful, but for me a few things didn't work. I wondered why the first part of the book was necessary when it seemed like a vehicle to get the characters to the place where the history of Jeju could be told - that seemed like the more urgent part of the story. Why not just write a historical fiction without the friend, the injury, the snowstorm? I also think, for me, not knowing about that period in Korean history I was left with gaps in my knowledge trying to understand what was being told in the story (that's more a me issue than a book issue I suppose). With that said, I learned some things and was glad to read an advanced copy of this book.

Confession time, this book sounded fascinating which was why I requested it from Netgalley.

The reading started out brilliantly... the writing is really beautiful. Sentences that just linger and that invite you back to read them over.

All of that got lost for me though as I found myself needed to read passages over and over again to figure out what was going on in this very disjointed story. I knew absolutely nothing about a massacre that happened in Jeju, Korea in 1948 (I had to do a bit of a Google search to educate myself) and while the disjointedness of the story did not improve, I found that this dream-quest way of telling the story to make a bit more sense.

I wanted to find connections with the characters, but in the end... I just could not. I am not sure if the disjointed way of telling this story was the reason, but it certainly did not help. I also struggled to finish this book... I made myself just sit down and finish it. I have waited a few days to write my review, hoping that things would become clearer with some time and space... but they did not.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group - Random House | Hogarth for this digital copy to read. This book will be published January 21, 2025.

This book was challenging to read. The narrative felt disjointed, and it was often hard to follow which character each paragraph was focusing on, as the perspective shifted frequently. I found it difficult to grasp the history of the atrocities committed by Korean soldiers against Korean citizens, as this part of the story felt out of place and confusing, leaving me uncertain about the context and what was happening.

Kyungha has been asked by her friend Ineson to come see her. Ineson has had an accident with a circle saw
and is hospitalized. She asks Kyungha to travel to her home to take care of her bird. Kyungha endures a
perilous journey to Jeju due to the snow. Kyungha's nightmares are revealed along with details of Ineson's
family history and the 1948 Jeju uprising are revealed. Dreamlike sequences paint vivid pictures.
Story of friendship, family responsibility and history
#WeDoNotPart #RandomHouse #Hogarth #NetGalley

This novel was steeped in vivid imagery and engaging prose. There was a lot of ambiguity with certain aspects of the novel but I didn't feel like it retracted from the overall story. This novel definitely brings to life lost voices filled with love & friendship in the face of violence and horror.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for an advance readers copy of this book.

In spare but lyrical language, like brush strokes on a page, author Han Kang paints a haunting picture of two women in Korea, friends who are both emotionally damaged, and who seek wholeness by exploring the history of two modern massacres.

The ambience is as blurry as the snowstorm in which the narrator makes her way, with a sense of unreality and unreliability. Although the tale begins in a grueling heat wave, we enter the story as the she describes a chilling nightmare, and continue as she outlines the eerie, isolated life she has chosen to be living, deliberately cut off from those she loves.

The desperate call from a friend leads Kyungha (we eventually learn her name) on a journey to save the friend’s pet bird, and to understand how two massacres, one in the early 1950’s and one in 1980, both hidden from the public, continue to plague the present.

Originally published in 2021, this is the first English translation by the 2024 Nobel Laureate in Literature. While written with delicacy and subtly, the story is grim and graphic, and often confusing. Despite the importance of bearing witness to such atrocities, I would not recommend it to the people I know.

This novel was so beautifully written, and I loved the way it explored deep-rooted friendship alongside historical and familial trauma. The language was beautiful and full of imagery and detail I could clearly picture throughout, and I was consistently moved by the women’s strength and sudden motivations to survive after wanting so badly to die. I did get confused sometimes about whose memories were being related and how they connected to Kyungha’s book, and I felt like while the ambiguity kept me engaged, I wanted a bit more closure in the end.

I really enjoyed this magical, mystical tale. I wish it had been a bit longer but I very highly recommend.

"Han Kang's most revelatory book since The Vegetarian, We Do Not Part tells the story of a friendship between two women while powerfully reckoning with a hidden chapter of Korean history.

One winter morning, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her at a hospital in Seoul. Inseon has injured herself in an accident, and she begs Kyungha to return to Jeju Island, where she lives, to save her beloved pet - a white bird called Ama.

A snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon's house at all costs, but the icy wind and squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save the animal - or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. Lost in a world of snow, she doesn't yet suspect the vertiginous plunge into the darkness that awaits her at her friend's house.

Blurring the boundaries between dream and reality, We Do Not Part powerfully illuminates a forgotten chapter in Korean history, buried for decades - bringing to light the lost voices of the past to save them from oblivion. Both a hymn to an enduring friendship and an argument for remembering, it is the story of profound love in the face of unspeakable violence - and a celebration of life, however fragile it might be."

I must read it because I must know about the hidden history!

I still don’t know if I liked or disliked this book, but it is clearly a work or art. I think I may need to read this again. There is so much of the story left to interpretation- is her friend alive or dead? Is she alive or dead? Are the birds alive or dead? Is it a mystical story or literal story? I do not know. What I do know is that it is a very interesting backdrop to tell the story of the wartime atrocities that occurred on Jeju island. While WWII continues to provide fodder for historical fiction novels (and I am sure there are many more stories of atrocities yet to be written about), I really enjoyed reading about the easy relationship between these two women. I still don’t really know what is happening in this book, but I will likely not forget it.
Thank you NetGalley for a ARC.

How to even start this review. It’s like looking at abstract art and thinking - “anyone can do that”. And then suddenly you start crying and aren’t sure why.
This was my first Han Kang novel (certainly not my last). It’s a bit more artistic and lyrical than my typical read, so I suggest you be in the frame of mind for that. Nothing as overwhelming as an Olga Tokarczuk book, but still.
There are a number of repeating, thematic elements that are built upon as the story weaves through current and past, bus stop and hospital and cabin. I think this book has to be read in one long, depressing weekend. Get a giant mug of tea and begin. You will not want to resurface until the threads (or logs) are all unwoven and sorted.

Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her in a Seoul hospital, and is asked to visit Inseon's home on Jeju Island to take care of her pet bird.

Jeju Island under a snow storm brings back memories of history during the Korean War and also fifty years ago when residents were taken from their homes, the men incarcerated and eventually executed, all in the name of an anti communist purge by the military government. The book gives the appalling numbers of the thousands of people killed during this period of military rule in South Korea, their bodies thrown in the sea, buried in pits, some of which were since excavated, some still buried.

The description of the beauty of nature intermingles with references to the mass slaughter in Korean history. Han Kang writes with passion and conviction, yet her words fall gently but damningly at the same time. Her writing is full of pathos, yet it is easy to read and understand, as the topics seem personal. This is a great example of Witness Literature, a genre that aims to "mourn and heal" as it reveals and remembers. .

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

We Do Not Part by Han Kang is a first person-POV Korean contemporary novel focusing on the state violence in modern Korean history. When Kyungha visits her friend, Inseon, at a hospital in Seoul, it leads her to Jeju Island and some uncomfortable truths.

I was sent this book by the publisher about a month or two ago due to my interest in Korean literature, I believe. I was going to wait a little longer to read it but made it a priority when the president of South Korea declared martial law a few days ago because I was aware of some of the content in Han Kang's works. I had never heard of the April 19th Revolution before reading this or the massacre of the people of Jeju Island or the way the US encouraged this violence in an effort to eradicate communism. I'm absolutely going to be looking into them now out of respect for those we have lost and all of the Korean citizens who were willing to fight for their democracy in the middle of the night because they remembered their history.

This is one of those books where I cannot say whether or not I like it because it's not really a novel that's about enjoyment; it's asking it's reader to remember the horrors of the past and gives those horrors human faces. It is profoundly uncomfortable in how the narration discusses the murder of thousands of people, including very young children. In a history textbook, it wouldn't be this challenging because a textbook often treats these events like they're just numbers to remember. Han Kang makes one of the characters a documentary filmmaker and uses those documentaries to give dreams, families, and more to these victims and then she gives the numbers. It is horrifying but also necessary to leave that lasting impact.

In many ways, this is a novel asking it's reader to bear witness, to remember, and to take that horror with them instead of leaving it behind. I will answer Han Kang's call and take these feelings with me government-sanctioned murder cannot keep happening and yet it is to this day.

Content warning for depictions of the systematic murder of thousands, including children

I would recommend this to readers who want to learn more about the recent history of the Koreas and Jeju Island

We Do Not Part is another brilliant historical text from Han Kang, as well as an outstanding translation from E. Yewon and Paige Morris. Read with Human Acts it not only displays the horror of the Korean government’s militance (ongoing to this day, as we saw with the president’s failed self coup de tat) but also serves as a reflection of the Korean literary tradition that has influenced Han.

My thanks to both NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Random House for an advance copy of this novel by the 2024 Nobel Prize Winner for Literature, dealing with the ties of friendship, and the atrocities of the past that still remain undiscussed and undealt with by society, yet still affect the minds and hearts of people, even as the years pass.

Humans seem uncomfortable with the past. We spend most of our time rewriting it in our minds, and in our culture. Those who spend too much time dwelling on the bad things in the past are told to get over it. Move on. One can't grieve forever. And yet we constantly look back to the good old days. When the air was clear, we weren't sad all the time, and people knew their place. Even if that place was being shot in a massacre that is still little discussed 70 years later. A massacre that reaches from the past and looms in the over the life of the protagonists in this story. We Do Not Part by 2024 Nobel Prize winning author Han Kang, translated by E. Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris, is a story set in Korea, dealing with a friendship between two women, an accident, snow, and the legacy of a massacre that happened on an island, and what they still means today.

Kyungha is living in Seoul, South Korea in an apartment that can't seem to be cool in summer, and warm up in winter. Kyungha is estranged from everyone in her life, with migraines that make it hard for her to think, an inability to finish any recent projects. Kyungha receives a call from a friend and collaborator, a film maker by the name of Inseon. Inseon has suffered an injury that has forced her to come to Seoul to go through incredibly painful treatment. Inseon begs Kyungha to travel to her home on Jeju Island, where Inseon has been living, to take care of her bird, the only thing that Inseon cares about. Kyungha agrees and travels to Jeju Island, arriving during a blizzard that stops planes from arriving. Kyungha, after long bus trips and getting lost in the woods finally gets to Inseon house and studio and finds the bird she has been asked to take care of dead. However the birds is soon alive again, and Kyungha begins to wonder about her own mind, though it could be something else. Something much darker.

There is such a strong atmosphere to the book, I can't remember reading a book quite like it. There is such a feeling of dread, that something is going to go wrong, that one flips pages scared of what might happen next. The story is compulsive, I wanted to know what was going to happen, though I feared what might happen. Kyungha is different. You know there is much she is not sharing, though she seems honest in the beginning, why things are so bad for her, what her latest project is. And how can book a flight to take care of a bird. The writing is very good. Little moments, standing at a bus stop, in a blizzard with an old woman. This could be a short story in itself. The slow merging of the story with the real life story of the Jeju massacre, the realization that people never want to deal with things that have gone wrong, better to stash them away and never talk of them. And the knowing that secrets always have a habit of coming back to strike at us.

A book of power that readers have no idea where it is going, but with a strong sense of plot, and a message. This is the third book I have read by Han Kang, but this will be one that I will think about for a long time.

Han Kang's writing style is as light and effortless yet a sense of mystery and disquiet pulls the narrative forward. The characters in this book will go to extreme lengths for friends, a beautiful act to read and witness in today's world.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House-Hogarth for my arc in exchange for my unbiased opinion.

I was so excited to receive this arc. I've been such a huge fan of Han Kang since "The Vegetarian," and now with Kang being a Nobel winner, I am just so excited for more people to read her work. I gotta say, I was not disappointed by this.

"We Do Not Part" by Han Kang follows Kyungha as she goes to Jeju Island for her friend, Inseon, who has injured herself in a woodworking accident. Kyungha is charged with saving Inseon's beloved pet, Ama. As soon as she touches Jeju, a snowstorm hits and Kyungha must struggle against the storm to make it to Inseon's house or be lost in a world of white. Coincidentally, Ama is a white bird.

I loved this book. Like Kang's other books, you need to be prepared for depictions of suicidal ideation, self-harm, disordered eating, and general "problematic" depictions. I do think that amidst the growing international appeal of the South Korean 4B movement, works like this are important to read and engage with.

So, "We Do Not Part" was a difficult book for me to read emotionally. I won't say too much because genuinely, I think that you're better off reading this book yourself rather than having me regurgitate the story. But, what you will read will be poetic, haunting, and nightmarish. This, like Kang's other books, does ask a lot of the reader so if you're looking for a lazy read, this is not the book for you. If you want to be challenged and changed by the end of the novel, I may have found your new favorite book.

I enjoyed this book a lot because of how difficult it was to get through and how Kang forces the reader, I think especially American readers, to confront traumatic losses of life and war. I promise that when you read a Han Kang novel, you will be a different person than when you started.

WE DO NOT PART
Han Kang

"Can I tell you a story?"

She asked.

"It is a story I have been telling my whole life. It is the only one I know. I don't need you to change the story, I don't need you to change the characters, or change the ending...I just need you to listen."

Poetic and devastating haunting and unforgettable. For me to say less, is to leave you with more. So please pardon the brief summary.

A friend has an obscene request. To which the only answer is yes. She sets off on her way not knowing what the journey may hold. Not knowing what it would require of her. Only knowing she must walk the road.

There is a subtle shift in reality. One that might go unnoticed if not for the light changing. The sun set at a different point in the sky. The novel is given just as you are at the point of surrendering to the plot. To what it might have been.

Like an offering, the story is given at the cost of the giver.


The plot points from this novel are ripped from your nightmare, which the body remembers but your tongue is unable to articulate. A loss so big it encompasses not only you but every person who has come before you and every person who shall come after. It takes you, the dreams you haven't dreamed yet, and all the dreams you have for your children. It is a black hole and everyone you know is falling in.

It is nothing but death and destruction and they are denying its existence.

"Pull me out from inside."
Colorblind
The Counting Crows

I am always a different person at the end than at the beginning of a Kang novel. They take a little bit of the reader in the reading. They consume in the consuming. This one swallowed me whole.

I have often slept through history class. Bored with the dates, uninspired by royalty, and rulers of faraway lands. Unassuaged by its very cyclical nature. Not knowing how precious the idea of history was.

The very idea of things already being done, lives already lived. Lives already lost. Experiences already had. Hard times trodden through presumably so that there is no necessity of them being endured again.

But the only way to tell a new story is to know the one that came before. The only way to ensure a lesson is learned is to learn it. If not, history will repeat itself. It is in its nature to do so.

WE DO NOT PART is not a breezeway, or a flyover. It is solid and immovable. It is a hard story. A battleground where blood was shed and lives were lost. It is important and I am so thankful that out of the many, this is one.

Thanks to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group - Random House | Hogarth for the advanced copy! It was truly a pleasure.

WE DO NOT PART…⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This is the first book I have read by Han Kang. I really enjoyed it. It is a beautiful and painful historical novel that will take your breath away. Read this book!

I requested We Do Not Part from Netgalley as Han Kang had just won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Not for any one book for her overall output. She is probably one of the youngest persons to every win and definitely the first Korean. It is obvious why she won. She is one of those rare writers whose fiction is like poetry.
We Do Not Part is a story of two women with a tenuous relationship. One is in the hospital and the other treks over land, snowstorms, and water to feed the bird of her friend. But this story is a device to tell another story. That of a chapter of Korean history that is horrific and that the US took part in covering up. Kang shines a light of the buried history with such expertise that though shocking, we continue to read.
I loved this book, loved the writing, the poetry and the stories that evolve from her love of words.