English edition released Jan. 21 in US, Feb. 6 in UK

The English translation of Han Kang’s latest novel, “We Do Not Part,” arrived in the US on Jan. 21, with a UK release set for Thursday. Translated by E. Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris, the novel is the Nobel laureate’s most recent work, originally published in Korean in September 2021.
Han, who won the 2016 International Booker Prize for “The Vegetarian” (2007) and was shortlisted again in 2018 for “The White Book” (2016), released “We Do Not Part” five years later. In 2024, she became the first Asian woman to receive the Nobel Prize in literature, recognized for “her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”
In an interview with the Nobel Committee, Han said that if readers are new to her work, “We Do Not Part” would be a good place to start because writers feel most connected to their latest work.
A novel can be enjoyed independently, but understanding its historical and thematic context can enrich the reading experience. Here are some key insights to know before, and after, reading "We Do Not Part."

The title
“When people asked me what kind of book this was, sometimes I said it was a story of profound love, or a candle lit in the abyss of human nature,” Han said in an interview with her French publisher after winning the Prix Medicis for foreign literature in 2023.
The novel is divided into three parts: The first follows the narrator Kyungha, on a horizontal journey, from Seoul to her friend Inseon’s home on Jeju Island. The second part takes a vertical path, leading Kyungha and Inseon to one of humanity’s darkest nights and into the ocean’s depths. In the final part, the two light a candle at the bottom of the sea.
The true protagonist, said Han, is Inseon’s mother, Jeongsim, who is linked to both Kyungha and Inseon. She is the one who refuses to stop mourning, stands against oblivion and does not bid farewell, which is closely tied to the meaning of the title.
Jeju 4.3 Incident
The novel is largely drawn from the Jeju 4.3 Incident, which refers to the events that took place between March 1, 1947 and Sept. 21, 1954, on Jeju Island. Approximately 30,000 people, around 10 percent of the entire Jeju population, were killed in an indiscriminate massacre.
It was a chaotic time, just after Korea's independence from Japan in 1945, with the Korean Peninsula in the depths of the Cold War marked by extreme ideological conflict, according to the Jeju 4.3 Peace Foundation.
A group of Jeju islanders rose up against police brutality and called for a unified Korean government. However, they were met with violent responses from the police, the military and a far-right anticommunist paramilitary group from the mainland, with tacit backing from the US military. This led to an extermination campaign that branded the insurgents as communists. A large number of relatives and others deemed sympathizers were also killed under guilt by association.

Started with dream, brief stay in Jeju
Han has described “We Do Not Part” and her 2014 novel “Human Acts” as companion pieces, each drawing on dark chapters of Korean history, with “Human Acts” focusing on the 1980 Gwangju massacre.
The protagonist, Kyungha, is quite autobiographical -- a writer tormented by a recurring nightmare after publishing a book about a city called "G--."
The opening scene is based on an actual dream Han had in June 2014, the year she published “Human Acts.” Han was walking across a vast plain as snow fell, with thousands of black tree stumps scattered across the land, each one with a burial mound behind it. At one point, she found herself stepping into water, and she saw the ocean rushing in from the edge.
For years, she held onto the dream, and a memory from her time in Jeju resurfaced, helping her outline the story.
In her 20s, Han briefly lived on Jeju Island and occasionally ran errands for an elderly woman who lived downstairs. One day, while walking to the post office, the woman pointed to a wall near a hackberry tree and said, "This is where the people were shot and killed." Han later reflected on how the realization left her with a profound sense of helplessness.
Questions that shaped novel
During her Nobel Prize lecture on Dec. 7, Han said she endures questions and lives inside them each time she works on a novel.
For “We Do Not Part,” the questions at its core were: To what extent can we love? Where is our limit? To what degree must we love in order to remain human to the end?
Han has often spoken about the sensory nature of her writing, engaging all five senses in her stories. In “We Do Not Part,” she emphasized, touch played a particularly crucial role.
Reflecting on the notes she kept, she wrote: "Life seeks to live. Life is warm. To die is to grow cold. To have snow settle over one’s face rather than melt. To kill is to make cold."
