Han: A profound, ancestral anger
How do we carry the weight of what came before us?
Han (Korean)
There's a story I tell about my great-grandmother often. In the 1940s, she was a widow struggling to raise a single child. The Communist revolution had taken hold in China, forcing her out of her home — and her homeland — in a disturbingly violent way.
The details are less important here. The point is that I tell this story often, and think about it often, because it pisses me off.
What happened to my great-grandmother happened a long time ago, I get that. And I never even met her, I get that too. Her story is not my story, her identity is not my identity, and maybe her pain is also not mine to carry. Yet somehow, I hold a deep sense of resentment for the people who hurt her, both in her home country and when she came to the United States. That resentment holds for my grandmother, my mother, my aunts and uncles. When my mother tells me stories about what her family endured — not just the xenophobia, but the sacrifices they made financially, emotionally, and otherwise — it angers me in a way I can’t quite explain. It’s a profound anger, one that shapes who I am and how I see the world, and I can’t seem to let it go.
Recently, I discovered a Korean word that seemed to describe this feeling: “han.” Like most untranslatable words, it isn’t easily defined, but “han” has been described as a profound blend of sorrow, regret, anger, and longing. It’s a collective emotion, and it can be an inherited one, too. In an essay, Eunice Kim asks her Korean father about han after they are separated for many years:
“He said as the years go by, the sadness and regret I feel from our time apart will eventually turn into my own version of han.”
Some say han is a uniquely Korean experience, but Minsoo Kang, a professor of history at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, writes about its problematic origins (which he compares to the way the word “hysteria” has been used against women) and how Korean han has become something of a stereotype.
“Some people insist that han is a uniquely Korean idea that only Koreans can truly grasp,” Kang writes. “Yet it is about 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.”
Han doesn’t explain everything Korean, but it does seem to explain a distinct brand of anger, one fueled by culture and history.
Kristin Neff, the self-compassion researcher, once told me that anger is a beautiful thing. She said she used to be ashamed of her anger and would try to hide it away. But then she realized her anger also helped her stand up for a colleague. It taught her to fight back against the systems she found oppressive. I’m not Korean, and I'm not sure if my own anger is truly han. But to Kang’s point, maybe framing han as unique to Korean culture risks reinforcing stereotypes. I just don’t know.
I do know, however, that the way “han” is described feels so familiar. I’ve felt it my whole life. And it’s hard to give up the experiences of those who came before me, not only because I feel a kinship with them, but because part of me is still looking for a way to make things right. So I hold onto the anger. But anger doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Anger can be productive and even beautiful. We can channel it for good—in our writing, in our art, in our activism.
From the archives
The Biggest Wastes of Time We Regret When We Get Older: I wrote this piece in 2016, and it recently made its way back to me. It’s cool to see something I wrote so long ago still making its rounds on the internet, and it’s kind of bizarre to read my past self’s thoughts on getting older.
Share-worthy
A poem: American Han
My friend Alan Henry’s latest newsletter about who gets to have an opinion in media. Read his book, Seen, Heard and Paid: The New Work Rules for the Marginalized.
“There's a lot that we can learn about your mental health from what you post on social media.” I helped put together this Hidden Brain episode about what our digital footprints reveal about us — and it’s more than you think.
This week’s soundtrack
My kid recently watched his first movie, Moana, and y’all, I can’t stop listening to this song. Am I becoming a…Disney Adult?
-Kristin
This essay touches on such a huge subject, and I read it with great interest. I think every immigrant child carries the burden of our ancestors' history with us, whether we are fully aware of what happened or not. Much of their trauma got passed down to us in the forms of our emotional makeup. It was fascinating to learn about the Korean word "han" and the meaning behind it. Do you happen to know how it looks in written form? I'm wondering if there is a Chinese character equivalence to that word, since Chinese characters used to be incorporated in the Korean language just as kanji is in Japanese. Seeing the word would help me grasp the meaning in a much more profound way.
I think it's healthy to feel anger on your ancestors' behalf... it's a kind of righteous anger for the injustices done.
But in our culture and my own upbringing, anger was an emotion that was not allowed to be expressed openly. It signaled bad character and danger, so for the longest time, it was my emotional kryptonite--until something major happened in my life, and I learned to finally express anger in a way that saved me.
"Anger is a beautiful thing"—what a profound observation! I've only heard this expressed once elsewhere and really like this reframing of anger as something to learn from and use as fuel in fighting oppression.
Always love your posts, Kristin. Hope you have a wonderful holiday!