Human Acts

Jeong-dae narrates this chapter after his death. His body has been carted off by soldiers in a military truck and stacked near the bottom of a heap of bodies in an empty lot. His corpse is badly crushed and damaged by this mistreatment.

Although Jeong-dae didn’t encounter any souls like himself in the military truck, after the soldiers dump their bodies, he navigates to the top of the pile, and there, he feels something brush against him: “…that breath-soft slip of incorporeal something, that faceless shadow, lacking even language, now, to give it a body” (57). Jeong-dae cannot communicate with this other soul, and eventually, it drifts off. This happens repeatedly throughout the night as he brushes up against other souls. As the first light of dawn begins to show, Jeong-dae suddenly thinks of Dong-ho and how he was with him right up until the moment he died.

Putrefaction and rot begin to set into the bodies, and they are further defiled by insects and parasites. Jeong-dae wants to look for Dong-ho but finds himself stuck to his rotting body. However, as he sits trapped, Jeong-dae realizes that Dong-ho isn’t among the dead—leading him to discover that if he focuses his attention on a particular individual, he can sense whether they are alive or dead.