Gwangju Abroad: The Humanity in Humiliation – The Search for Yangsim in National Disasters

The Humanity in Humiliation:

The Search for Yangsim in 양심 National Disasters 良心

By Ashley Sangyou Kim

The book Nokdu Bookstore’s May (녹두서점의 오월) combines three family members’ accounts of their roles in the May 18 Democratic Movement (5.18). In the epilogue, researcher Kim Jung-han finishes the book with a section titled “The Humanity in Humiliation”:

In Nokdu Bookstore’s May and other 5.18 testimonies, the words humiliation, embarrassment, and shame reappear. These words describe the emotion people feel when they receive inhumane treatment and sense an urge to become inhumane themselves. These three witnesses, who endured in the boundary between the humane and inhumane with every fiber in their bodies, have maintained a human-like shame within themselves. This is the wisdom of normal folks.

The senseless violence the three authors witnessed only emphasizes the bravery and empathy in the city’s response. Their shame is testament to the fact that the violence has not numbed their ability to feel remorse and responsibility for the deceased. These survivors knew what comfort and stability complacency could offer, but ultimately rejected the every-man-for-himself mindset that could have quieted their nightmares.

Here, Kim acknowledges the undying yangsim (양심) in the three authors who survived 5.18 – even when the military used brutal force in an attempt to destroy it. The closest English translation of yangsim is “conscience,” but it does not have the same everyday ring to it like yangsim. It is the ultimate guard against selfishness, a mentality that relentlessly checks the consequences of one’s actions on others. In the 5.18 demonstrators’ case, yangsim is used in the most profound sense: Can you risk your life for the freedom of future generations? In other situations, the meaning is light-hearted, such as refusing the last cookie after you have had “almost the entire tray.” Thus, the word yangsim means both the bare minimum ethical standard and the most ferocious demonstration of selflessness. Depending on one’s action, it can be worn as a cloak of shame or a badge of honor. As the political prisoner in Han Kang’s 5.18 novel Human Acts states:

Do you know what that feels like, Professor? How invigorating it is to feel as if your whole being is thoroughly clean and benevolent. A marvelously clean jewel of yangsim entering my forehead and embedding itself there, the splendid spark of light.

Yangsim is a double-edged sword. People with the most impenetrable yangsim fought on the streets until the very last battle and met their death. Additionally, what does it mean for the survivors to live after the disaster with yangsim? There comes a moment when the survivor’s own breath appears as proof of incompetence and selfishness – if they had sacrificed a little more, would they still be alive? Perhaps some recall leaving the civilian soldiers in the Provincial Office knowing what would happen to them in a few hours. Perhaps others remember their bent knees in front of the perpetrators. Or the shame could be triggered by the memory of something much more subtle, such as a detained protester’s desperation for the last rotten bean sprout in a starved prison cell. The weight that these witnesses carry for the rest of their lives is at times selfdestructive, but it is also a sign of the responsibility humans feel to each other. This responsibility gestures toward a possibility for a safe and thriving community in which people take their neighbors’ safety as their own. It is a feeling that triumphs over one’s own survival instincts – in fact, it is most pronounced when survival instincts are on high alert. Without the capability to share this yangsim at all levels of society, death on a mass scale is always possible.

Understanding yangsim – its origins, ramifications, and altogether common absence – is the beginning of the

necessary philosophical work to prevent all national disasters, not just deadly protests that marked South Korea’s turbulent past. At the end of all these events, it surprisingly matters little whether the deaths were caused by direct violence or neglect. From 5.18 to the Sampoong Department Store collapse of 1995, wails from people mourning their family members’ preventable deaths eerily sound the same: painful shrieks with bursts of words speculating on the victim’s last thoughts, regretting the moment of separation, and mourning what the future had held for them.

These families share another commonality: They see the perpetrators walk away without any consequences, a light sentencing at best. Many families never even learn the full details of what caused the calamity, especially when the crime implicates powerholders. The most hurtful and common justification following one of these incidents is to blame the victims. This happened during the Icheon warehouse fire (April 29, 2020). After the disaster took 39 lives of construction workers, many news articles attributed the fire to employees’ irresponsible disposal of cigarette butts. However, the fire department firmly disagreed as the cause of the fire turned out to be an explosion of inflammatory material in the basement. There was no construction safety officer on site, which is required under Article 12 of the Occupation Safety and Health Act. Experts claim that the presence of a safety officer could have reduced or prevented the casualties.

Narratives like those about the cigarette butts in the Icheon fire always serve to hide the reality of a moneyover-safety mentality, inaction from people in positions of authority, or both. Most incidents fade from the public consciousness or are swept up in political battles before anybody can ask: Where was the yangsim? Where was it in the captain who escaped the sinking Sewol ferry, leaving the students behind? Where was it in the construction company that ignored a civil rights commission’s complaint about an unsafe building demolition in Gwangju’s Hak-dong just two months before the structure collapsed onto a busy street? Even after democratization, which made yangsim much less costly, South Korea still struggles with conscience – and no one knows who the next people might be to pay the price.

On the surface, 5.18 and the rest of the country’s postdemocratization national disasters look nothing alike. However, they tell the story of ordinary people thrown in extraordinarily difficult situations. Everything about the deaths, from the cause to the reactions, reveals multiple contradictions within Korean society that will never go away unless the citizens confront them head-on. Most significantly, these catastrophes demonstrate both the incredible strength and the pathetic lack of yangsim: The fabric of a society withers away every time people move on to the next disaster.

The Author

Ashley Sangyou Kim (김상유) is a senior at University of California at Berkeley studying rhetoric. She loves reading Toni Morrison, hiking, and baking with her little sister. She currently lives in Brea, California, but spent her early childhood in Gwangju. Her hope is to return to the city after graduation and work with the youth there.