The Ethics of Remembrance: Narrative Strategies of Historical Trauma in Han Kang's We Don't Part

This paper examines The Ethics of Remembrance: Narrative Strategies of Historical Trauma in
It focuses on how the novel ethically represents suppressed
historical brutal through innovative narrative techniques. Centered on the traumatic legacy of
theory and memory studies, this study argues that Han Kang employs narrative
fragmentation, silence, and spectral imagery as ethical strategies of remembrance. The paper
further explores how the novel resists narrative finality, emphasizing witnessing over
explanation and empathy over resolution. By privileging affective engagement and moral
restraint, We Do Not Part challenges dominant historical discourses that seek coherence and
domesticate trauma, positioning literature as a space for ethical memory that honors the dead
while unsettling the living. Through its careful balance of silence and testimony, the novel
exemplifies how contemporary trauma fiction can function as an ethical mode of historical
remembrance.