Han, Passion and Herd Mentality
By Yun Chung
I live with ``han." My han is, however, nothing like what Jon Huer, a sociologist, portrayed in his article, ``Psychology of Korean Han'' (The Korea Times, March 22). He wrote about ``wonhan'' (a deep han). But wonhan is not a deep han.
Han could be interpreted as a sorrowful feeling of grief, painful regret and unfulfilled hope rooted in one's heart. Han takes time to form from external and personal causes. Han has no specific emotional outlet; nor does it actively seek remediation. Conversely, wonhan is close to resentment, which can form instantaneously with a specific target for revenge or emotional release.
Park Kyung-ni (1926 - 2008) was a Korean novelist. She wrote ``Toji'' (The Land), a 16-volume epic novel. It tells the struggles, human dignity under oppression, and han of her people during 1894-1945. Her own life was full of han. She lost her husband and only son during the Korean War. Below is an excerpt of what she said of han during an interview with Madang in 2006.
``Han relates to energy and hope. Han compels me to think of tomorrow and about the afterlife and the mystery of the universe. People with han are more resilient and more hopeful than people of higher education devoid of han.''
Huer thinks that Koreans get han from self-inflicted victim mentality. He stated: ``Any [han] of this accumulated and self-multiplied injustice can trigger the Korean heart to display an incredibly intense outburst of feelings and actions.'' Han is, however, pain, not pleasure. Who would want to ``self-multiply injustice'' only to feel the intensified pain of han? Huer has distorted han just as he has misrepresented other aspects of Korea in his articles. His favorite words are strange, weird, herd mentality, and uncivilized, all used as pejoratives of Korea.
Huer said ``in advanced societies'' like America, ``few han are without established channels for resolution. … if one is mad at the telephone company, for example, one is directed to the Better Business Bureau.'' This and other examples of han are ludicrously simplistic.
Any people, not just Koreans, can have han. Only the word han is Korean, as tsunami (shore waves) is Japanese. Consider the following cases of han.
Emmett Till was a 14-year old black boy in 1955. As a prank with his friends, he grabbed the hand of a 21-year old white woman, asked for a date, and whistled at her, or something like that. Several days later, his badly mutilated body was found in a river. His white murderers were acquitted by an all-white jury. They later confessed their crime to a reporter for money. Did Emmett's mother have ``channels'' to resolve her grief? Was ``justice served'' when people said her son's death ``energized the nascent civil right movement?'' Her rage must have changed to han with time.
Last January, I watched African Americans flocking en masse to Washington D.C. to celebrate one of their own, Obama, being inaugurated as president. Their faces, some crying in joy, told their han. They were showing off ``herd mentality,'' happily. People who have been oppressed for generations feel the pain of injustice. This pain is han. It is this han that has fueled and sustained their passion to keep the civil right movement in the forefront. Martin Luther King's ``I Have a Dream'' speech was an expression of han. Obama's han energized him to have the ``Audacity of Hope.''
Huer suggested in another article (April 5) that Koreans are only an ``emotional herd'' that cannot sustain their passion. I met a group of engineers and workers at Hyundai Shipyard in Ulsan in 1977. They slept on ``gamanis'' (straw mats from used rice sacks) on the dirt ground under the stars at nights and went straight to work the following morning. The entire ``Korea herd'' then was being driven by a nation-building passion, which continues today.
People (a herd) without han call weaker herds the ``uncivilized'' to justify their exploitation. Civilized people came to the new world uninvited. They forcibly took what was not rightfully theirs. Cherokees, Navajos, Apaches and countless other ``uncivilized herds'' perished just like buffalo herds by the millions. To take more land, the ``civilized'' broke hundreds of treaties with the ``uncivilized'' and literally herded them into ``herd lots.'' The ``uncivilized'' only left ``trails of tears'' while thousands died on the way to their ``lots.''
African Americans have made great strides in achieving civil liberty. They had to fight for it; they marched, rioted, even shed blood. They are succeeding because their population (13 percent) has never fallen (thankfully) below the critical mass that the ``advanced society'' could ignore. Native Americans are, however, now so few (0.7 percent) in number that they are neither seen nor heard. After years on parched lands here and there where no buffalo roams, they will have formed, if not already, a new word, deep-han, a word not found even in Korean.
Koreans' han has been sustaining their passion toward a new Korea where no ``herd'' will sneer at another ``herd,'' hairy or not. Be patient. Korea will get there, soon.
Only the humbled can learn han. By learning the humanity of han, the ``civilized herd'' can then learn to respect ``uncivilized herds,'' the first step toward peace.
The writer is a retired engineer in California. He may be reached at