A SOUNDLESS cry, a cracking voice, and a trembling musical note that persists over the lonely wind: these are just some of the examples of what han, a sadness that best reflects the Korean sentiment. It is a mother’s sorrow, the loss of one’s homeland, and above all, the crushing burden of life that can be incorporated into an artistic expression that pulls at your heartstrings, making it a sublime sadness that surpasses mere emotions. Han is simultaneously an extremely personal and national sentiment that ties Koreans together. Most would even regard han as a concept exclusive to Korean culture, claiming that others would not be able to fully comprehend its abysmal meaning. However, as unique as this sentiment is to Korea, the truth is that the idea of “sublime sorrow” within han can be found in many other parts of the globe.

Han in the Korean context

   According to the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, the sentiment of han is defined as a figurative knot that forms in one’s heart as a result of an accumulation of intense psychological anguish. The essence of han is made up of two parts: the conceiving of the knot and the resolvement of it. The former is achieved through a stage of “obsession” over a psychological wound which “festers” due to the inability to let go of one’s negative emotions. The latter is accomplished when such emotions either become incarnated into an act of revenge or resolved through acceptance.

   Releasing han can happen in two ways. First is in the form of violence and revenge. This can be seen in folktales where the deceased’s han is comforted in order to find peace, typically by having their wishes answered or through traditional shamanic practices. A famous example of this can be found in the folktale “Jang-hwa and Hong-ryeon.” The two sisters, Jang-hwa and Hong-ryeon, were living peacefully with their widowed father, until he married an evil stepmother who wanted to dispose of the girls. She spread rumors that the eldest daughter Jang-hwa had been unchaste, disguising a bloody carcass of a rat as an aborted baby to prove her promiscuity. As an excuse to restore the honor of the family, the stepmother sends one of her sons to drown Jang-hwa in a lake, with Hong-ryeon following soon after. This is where the sisters’ han is conceived. Following their deaths, their spirits return, asking the mayor of the town for help, causing him to die from shock. Each newly appointed mayor was found dead after the first night of their term, and such occurrences continued until the last mayor was able to answer the sisters’ plea. The mayor agreed to help the sisters clear their names, and as a result, they were able to reincarnate back to life while the stepmother was punished for her crimes. This tale illustrates one of the most common forms of resolving han through revenge.

   Despite the grim picture drawn by Jang-hwa and Hong-ryeon’s tale, the artistic aspect of han is mostly associated with the beauty of accepting one’s fate through the willful resilience to overcome hardship. One of the most popular subjects for han literature is jung-han, which is a subcategory of han that refers to a lover’s sorrow resulting from forceful separation. Found since the kingdom of Goguryeo in literary pieces such as “Hwang-jo-ga[1]”, jung-han not only represents great loss and despair, but it also includes a sense of hope where the character believes that things will get better. For instance, an ancient Goryeo folk song “Seo kyung byeol gok” first expresses lament and resentment towards a departed lover but is followed up by the refusal to succumb to the situation and a determination not to give up on the lover. The unyielding willfulness of taking matters into one’s own hands is a key element of how han is expressed in art forms, and the audience is able to find beauty within the human ability to courageously steer the wheels of their own fate.

   Although the technical resolvement of han itself can be narrowed down to revenge or acceptance, they are not the only solutions. Hae-hak, which refers to the Korean sentiment of humor, is regarded as one of the positive methods for releasing han, especially in folktales and pan-so-ri[2] told among the lower class population. A plot involving hae-hak usually involved a peasant poking fun at a yang-ban[3]—such stories were largely popular among commoners, as laughing along to the jokes allowed them to release their own han caused by the oppressive and discriminatory class system of the time.

   The focus of han in literature began including a variety of narratives, commonly associated with different forms of oppression including those rooted in simple family matters, social struggles, and—most prominently—political antagonism between nations. It is believed that this is due to the various civil and international conflicts dotted throughout Korea’s history, as well as the revolutionary movements against the aristocracy that made life difficult for people in both the personal and public scope. The frequent political turmoil provided an unfortunately large number of opportunities for han to be conceived. Thus, it became natural for people to express their sadness and unite under the shared sentiment of han. This was especially so when Korea was experiencing Japan’s colonial oppression—the han of losing one’s homeland dissolved into the idea of retaining faith in Korea’s independence. These sentiments were expressed in literary pieces such as “The Silence of Love” by poet Han Yong-un: “So I take these uncontrollable forces of sorrow and baptize myself in new hope.” Through this line, the speaker demonstrates resilience—the kind that separates one from their sadness and urges them to cling to the notion of hope, releasing the knot of han in the process and allowing the individual to reach an ultimate state of tranquility.

Variations in the sublimity of sorrow

   Contrary to the well-established perception that han is a uniquely Korean sentiment, it may not be the only concept that expresses the idea of “sublime sorrow.” Kim Min-soo (Prof., Univ. of Missouri-St. Louis) views han as a fairly common concept seen in cultures with a similar progression of history to that of Korea’s—namely,  being colonized by other nations. In an article titled “The Problem with Han,” Kim addressed the fact that the han we know today is a notion created by a group of intellectuals in the 1960s in an attempt to reconstruct the Korean identity that was lost during historical tragedies such as the colonization of Japan, the Korean War, and the subsequent division of North and South Korea. Because our understanding of han is tied specifically to certain periods in history, Kim claims that this sentiment is “as useful at explaining everything Korean as the term ‘rugged individualism’ is at explaining everything American, or the samurai is in capturing all that is Japanese,” thus suggesting that han is not as representative of Korean culture as one would think.

   In fact, although not exactly identical in tone or cultural texture, the concept of “sublime sorrow” exists around the world in different forms. For example, with the historical trauma of being colonized by the British Empire, Ireland has produced literature with similar sentiments as the Korean han  For example, John Millington Synge’s play Riders to the Sea tells a story of Maurya, a mother who loses all the male members of her family to the sea. The main plot of the story is about preventing her last surviving son from going out to sea, which she eventually fails. When Maurya learns about the death of her son, she is consumed with intense regret, grief, and anger, which is the point where han-like emotions are conceived. As she expresses these feelings in her last soliloquy[2], the audience is able to see the progression of her “knot” being resolved as her words change from lament to bitter acceptance. At the end of the story, Mauyra is no longer a frail and anxious widow, but a woman who has been weathered by life’s cruelty. In a tragic way, Mauyra has become invincible to fate’s attempt to make her despair, because she has nothing to lose at this point. Through the conceiving and resolving of anguish reminiscent of han, Mauyra rises above the trials of grief and learns to accept—and even conquer—her own destiny by choosing to rise above the pain of loss.

   Maurya’s way of overcoming her own tragedy is connected to Aristotle’s idea of the “tragic hero,” who is a variation of the han-infused protagonists that appear in Korean stories. In his book Poetics, Aristotle describes a tragic hero as someone “whose misfortune is attributed, not to vice or depravity, but an error of judgment[3].” Such errors of judgment are either brought upon the characters due to their own shortcomings, or are caused by the protagonist being blind-sighted by their fate set by the gods. For instance, the protagonist in Sophocles’ play, Oedipus, King of Thebes, unknowingly marries his mother and kills his father. Upon realizing the truth behind his deeds, Oedipus acquires a terrible sense of despair similar to those that characterize han, consequently leading him to pluck out his eyeballs and renounce his throne. Although extremely violent, such acts can be recognized as Oedipus’ struggle to release his emotional trauma through self-punishment—a method of accepting his destiny in acknowledging himself as the perpetrator of the tragedy. Shortly before he exiles himself, Oedipus says that “no sickness now, nor any mortal blow, / Shall slay this body[4],” indicating that he has reached a psychological point in which he has ascended beyond his emotional burden.

   Han-like elements of emotional oppression can also be found in the Hollywood film industry, especially in the form of film techniques used in melodrama. Melodramatic illustrations of emotion share a similarity with the cathartic process of han in that they both involve the expression of intense emotions in a suppressed manner. Han is usually associated with people who are not free to express anger or sorrow as their societal position prevents them from taking direct action against injustice. For example, as seen in the story “Jang-hwa and Hong-ryeon,” the sisters were not able to call out the wrong doings of their stepmother as they were supposed to be “obedient girls” who did not speak ill of the parents and elders. Likewise, Douglas Sirk, a German American filmmaker in the 1950s, uses mise-en-scène[5] to create a saturated frame that overshadows any visual cues of the character’s emotion—such as their facial expression or body language—thereby suppressing the emotional expression of the character that is placed within it... In All that Heaven Allows, main character Cary is torn between continuing her life as a respectable middle-class widow or starting a new, care-free love life with her romantic interest, Ron. Her internal turmoil is overshadowed by bright colors,a surplus of ornaments, and bustling crowds placed within the cinematic frame, which overrides Cary’s emotional expression and leave no room for her to cathartically reveal her feelings in privacy. This filming technique is similar to the process of oppression that causes han to form. Through a restricted expression of emotion, Cary becomes a character that is reserved and passive character that is defined by her surroundings rather than having a personality herself. Sirk’s use of the mise-en-scène in this manner portrays an invisible oppression where, even after the presence of a seemingly happy ending, the question still remains if the decision was truly made according to Cary’s own desires.

   By examining the works of Synge, Sophocles, and Sirk, it can be said that han is one of the many different forms of sublime sorrows that exist in various cultures. Although there is a slight difference in how they are expressed, the emotions that the aforementioned characters experience all fall under the category of what the author Jay Caspian Kang describes as a “condition in which the afflicted convinces himself that the world has turned its back on him[6].”

Universal sympathy

   The “problem” with han, as Kim writes in his essay, is that it has the risk of producing a self-induced stereotype that portrays Korean people as those who hold on excessively to negative emotions. He also says that in the modern context, melancholic sentiment deriving from historical trauma no longer defines Koreans as a whole, as too much time has passed for people to continue identifying themselves with the suffering of their ancestors. Rather, Koreans use the word han to describe everyday tragedies or unrequited goals that are more related to the struggles of living in contemporary Korea.

   As times change, the definition of han has changed as well. Han is not a way of holding on to old grudges and wounds of the past, but it is a philosophy and a method of survival. It is a way of acknowledging the presence of tragedies in our lives, yet, at the same time, holding onto the possibility that life could be better with hope and determination. In other words han is a concept communicating the value found in moving forward rather than remaining static—thus, han does not only apply to Korean society, but can also be embraced universally, attaching itself to wherever“sorrow”can be found. Han will eventually be recognized as a sentiment that evokes sympathy across countries and cultures, encouraging individuals to find comfort in  knowing that their most vulnerable and personal emotions are, in fact, a universally-understood sentiment.

[1] Hwang-jo-ga: A song that is estimated to have been made in 17 B.C. by King Yoo-lee-myeong of Goguryeo; it is about the loneliness of being without a lover.

[2] Soliloquy: A speech that a character in a play gives to themselves

[3] Purdue University

[4] Oedipus, King of Thebes

[5] Mise-en-scène: The encompassing term for everything that makes up the arrangement of a frame in visual productions such as film

[6] The Loneliest Americans