“The national anthem rang out like a circular refrain, one verse clashing with another against the constant background of weeping, and you listened with bated breath to the subtle dissonance this created. As though this, finally, might help you understand what the nation really was.”
Analysis: Don-ho faces internal conflict when he ponders what the nation really represents since he feels that the nation itself killed the people. This can be connected to the guilt he feels about Jeong-dae’s death as he is persistent in tending to the corpses and looking for his friend because he personally feels responsible. He wonders whether he failed his best friend like the nation did with the people.
“It happened last Sunday, when you’d gone out alone to buy some practice papers from the bookshop in front of the school. Frightened by the sight of armed soldiers, who seemed to have materialized out of nowhere, you took a side alley leading down to the riverside.”
Analysis: In this flashback the audience is given, in detail, the fear that these innocent civilians were facing. Through the use of imagery by Kang, the audience is given greater insight into the emotion felt by Dong Ho allowing him to feel greatly for Dong-Ho and others who have experienced the massacre and its aftermath.
“You don’t permit yourself the relief of closing your eyes as you peel back the cloth, or even afterwards, when you draw it back up again. You press your lips together so hard the blood shows through, clench your your teeth and think, I would have run away. Had it been this woman and not Jeong-dae who toppled over in front of you, still you would have run away. Even if it had been one of your brothers, your father, your mother, still you would have run away.”
Analysis: Here, it is known that Don-ho had experienced Jeong-dae’s death and the vivid description of him pressing his “lips together so hard the blood shows through” clearly establishes how guild-ridden he feels. He also antagonizes himself by saying he “would’ve run away” had it been Jeon-dae or any of his family members who toppled over in front of him which further insinuates the remorse and demoralising impacts this massacre had on him.
“Her death was every bit as quiet and understated as she herself had been. Something seemed to flutter up from her face, like a bird escaping from her shuttered eyes above the oxygen mask. You stood there gaping at her wrinkled face, suddenly that of a corpse, and wondered where that fluttering, winged thing had disappeared to.”
Analysis: Dong-ho continues to question the state of the soul and the impact of the soul being free from the body. This again is his internal conflict as he wonders the state of his friend as he deeply cared for him.
Overarching Analysis: Dong-ho is symbolic to the emotional turmoil of the impacts of the Gwangju massacre as it leaves him and many others emotionally wounded. The guilt he feels for feeling personally responsible for the death of his friend shows how humane his character is; this leads him to volunteering to aid with the corpses. This furthermore leaves him to face internal and external conflicts with the atrocities and violence committed against unarmed citizens much like many other youthful characters. Dong-ho as a dynamic character contextualizes the conflict with Gwanju because of his inquiries about where the souls disappears to once the body decays and what the nation represents.
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