We Do Not Part

by Han Kang

I knew about the organization, how back in 1948, after the first government was established, whole swathes of people were categorized as left-wingers in need of education and made to join the League so that they might benefit from its purported goal to convert, protect, and guide. If someone in your family had ever been in the audience of a political talk, you had to join. The government had set quotas, and many people were enrolled by village and neighborhood heads intent on meeting those quotas, or signed up voluntarily after hearing about the rice and fertilizers they would receive. Entire families were enrolled as well, meaning its “members” included women, children, and the elderly, and when war broke out in the summer of 1950, everyone on the list was preventively detained, then summarily executed. The estimated number of people killed and buried in secret around the country is said to be between two hundred thousand and three hundred thousand.