Han is an emotion—an individual emotion of grievance felt when experiencing an event. On a religious level, individual Han relates to sin, which is the object of repentance. Thus, Han is resolved through atonement. Alongside this is communal Han—the Han of the Minjung. Here, the Minjung refers to all those who are wronged but cannot speak because they must use the language of the ruler. It is a double grievance: to be victimized and to be unable to speak. It is precisely these subjects who constitute the Minjung. Their Han is not solved by atonement; it cannot be understood as collective sense of guilt. It is the world that made them so; the structure of the world is wrong. This is strictly a matter of social justice. Suh Nam-dong defines it as follows:

Han is an affective state that arises when the oppressed and the weak are wronged and their rights trampled, and they feel truly aggrieved, yet there is no one to hear their plea or resolve it. Thus, Han is the very sound of grievance appealed to heaven, the voice of the nameless and voiceless Minjung.5

Han is resolved only when the scream of the person harboring it is heard. The one who does this is the Priest of Han. He responds to the sound—a cry of grievance reaching heaven. It is an unrefined groan uttered to heaven because there is no one to listen. At this moment, the sound is not refined. It is unpolished, merely a leaking groan. No one pays attention to this groan, as if they have lost their voice. The priest hears the voice of the nameless, innocent Minjung. The church must hear that sound, for that is the mission field where God works.

The church must become the Priest of Han. In the 1970s, many peasant households moved to the cities. Within the barren settings of their lives, they could not even find work. They lived as vagrants. As the urban poor, the Minjung drifted helplessly, deprived of the breath to care for one another amidst the chaos. They were inevitably driven into a life of crime. The world branded them as evildoers and sinners. Far from offering them sanctuary, the church further condemned them and demanded their repentance. They turned a blind eye to the contradictions of society even after seeing them, and were solely intent on expansion like a corporation. They blessed the rich. The Minjung condemned themselves. It was the church that conditioned them to do so. Their suffering was framed as an individual sin of their own making, effectively preventing them from turning their gaze toward social injustice and directing their anger outward. The church is called to be the Priest of Han, binding up the brokenhearted and giving strength to the lowly so that they may stand firm once again. The church must become the Priest of Han, comforting the oppressed and unraveling the knots of their Han.6 To do so, it must listen well. The sound of Han is like the sound of the Emille Bell.

“The Legend of the Emille Bell” is a representative folktale of Han. In his analysis of the nature of Han, Suh Nam-dong utilized folktales and “social biographies.” These folktales vividly illustrate how the Korean people confronted and sought to resolve their Han. The sacrifice of the poor is manifested in the legend of the Emille Bell. The Divine Bell of King Seongdeok was commissioned by his son and grandson across generations to commemorate the King’s achievements. It was a large-scale state project, demanding the mobilization of 72 tons of copper. Crafting a bell of such immense scale required not only advanced technology but also an “extraordinary” devotion—specifically, a human sacrifice. Consequently, the king and his officials seized a three-year-old girl from a destitute family and cast her into the molten metal. Thus, the Emille Bell was completed. Whenever the bell was tolled, it emitted a cry calling for its mother: “Emille.”7 While the power-holders strived to produce a beautiful resonance, they were utterly indifferent to the sacrifice of a three-year-old girl from a poor household. The grand sound produced by the collective effort of the entire nation was, in essence, the cry of “Emille,” saturated with the Han of the Minjung.8 Such is the nature of the sound of Han. On the surface, it is a sublime and beautiful chime that seems to carry no particular meaning. Yet, within that “Emille” sound lies the deep-seated Han of the people—a desperate plea for its resolution. The Priest of Han must listen intently to this very sound. 

One must become the ‘Priest of Han’ who reveals the ‘history of these sound’—representing the voice of Abel’s blood crying out to heaven from the ground (Genesis 4:10), listening to the groans of the neighbor who was robbed and beaten on the road to Jericho and binding up their painful wounds (Luke 10:25), and crying out so that the wages unpaid to the laborers reach the ears of the Lord of Hosts (James 5:4). It is to ‘open one’s mouth for the voiceless sounds of the mute and the lonely, and resolve the Han of the oppressed and the poor’ (Proverbs 31:8). 9

The suffering spit out groans that carry no particular sense. That is the sound of Han, the cry of the Minjung. As outcasts, disregarded and loathed by society, their only available language consists of gasps like ‘Ah!’, ‘Heuk!’, or ‘Ugh!’. No one bothers to ask what these sounds signify. Even when they do, the sounds are incomprehensible. The voice of the Minjung is lost to the world, as no one truly intends to hear it. People only have ears for the words of the powerful— the logical and polished discourse of the elite. The Minjung, unable to speak the language of power, find themselves silenced. Robbed of their tongue, their bodies begin to testify. They suffer from ‘aphasia, amnesia, and all manner of ailments.’10

The Priest of Han lives the life of Jesus Christ. Jesus was the one who listened to the voices of the Minjung, whose language had been stripped away. He was a friend to tax collectors and sinners, standing in solidarity with those whom religious leaders had “crucified” as sinners. He understood words that, to the powerful, seemed incoherent and filled with self-excuse, or visceral groans and screams blurted out incomprehensibly. Inspired by the life of Jesus, Kim Ji-ha composed a narrative poem titled “The Story of Jang Il-dam.” Suh Nam-dong regards Jang Il-dam as the exemplar of the Priest of Han. Jang Il-dam’s theology is the Theology of Han; he professes to be a medium for unintelligible sounds and a bearer of that Han. 11

The Story of Jang Il-dam begins in prison. Those who dwell in prison are seen as having lost their humanity (Inryun-sangsil), and they are scorned by the world. Yet, behind this loss of humanity lies Han. Here, those cast into the abyss—the ones at the very base of existence—are those whose lives are knotted with Han. When the accumulation of Han overturns one’s inner self, a loss of humanity occurs. Jang Il-dam escaped from prison and became a hunted fugitive. While fleeing from his pursuers, he witnessed a scene that led to his enlightenment. A prostitute was giving birth. She was so severely afflicted with venereal disease that she could barely move her own body. Yet, from that very body, a new life was being born. In this, Jang Il-dam saw the birth of God. God is born paradoxically: “O, new life is born from a rotting corpse. God is being born.”12 The Son of God, Jesus, was born from a human womb. That scene was perhaps a “loss of divine order.” Jang Il-dam realized that God resides within the human body. Life exists in the lower strata, at the very bottom, in the abyss of human existence. Jang Il-dam, the son of a butcher, thus attained enlightenment: “Man is Heaven.” (Innaecheon)13 

Having realized that Humanity is Heaven, he continues his Cheon-ju (天主, bearing/serving God) struggle. This journey involves realizing the divine presence within (Sicheonju, 侍天主), cultivating a body worthy of God’s dwelling (Yangcheonju, 養天主), practicing God toward one’s neighbors (Haengcheonju, 行天主), and finally advancing to the stage of living as God (Saengcheonju, 生天主). Jang Il-dam deepened the profundity of his thoughts through encounters with various individuals. He engaged in rigorous debates with industrial mission pastors, priests, intellectuals, professors, labor union leaders, monks, and soldiers. These were individuals whose role was to embrace those leading difficult and arduous lives. Jang Il-dam rebuked them for their complacency. Through a praxis of struggle and a reflection rooted in solidarity, he mastered his own Han. Eventually, he severed it. This act of severance is referred to as Dan(斷). This Dan exists in a dialectical relationship with Han. Han accumulates; indeed, “to live is to accumulate Han.”14 Dan is what severs this Han. Subsequently, one accumulates Han once more, and Dan continues to sever it repeatedly. If life is Han, then Dan is also life. In the course of living, Dan advances to the point of self-negation. Jang Il-dam, who had amassed Han in the prison—the deepest abyss where freedom is utterly denied—internalized Dan during his travels. He is a butcher. A butcher is one who slaughters beasts. The greatest beast, however, is the self. Thus, Dan is the act of killing one’s own self.

Gradually, the number of followers grew, and they formed a community. Those who followed Jang Il-dam were also people deeply saturated in the Han of the abyss. He sought to sever their Han through Dan (斷). His actions—ranging from violence and fierce debate to miracles—were all attempts to cut through this deep-seated Han. Yet, Dan does not end with the individual; the world must be transformed. Since it is the world itself that accumulates Han, one must overturn the world to bring Han to an end. He proclaimed Haedong-geungnak (海東極樂, the Eastern Paradise) and marched toward Seoul, the stronghold of Han. In Seoul, the poor attempted to encircle the center of power holding tin cans. These cans signify utter powerlessness. With nothing but this powerlessness, they advanced toward the heart of power. This illustrates that Dan is not merely a matter of physical violence. Such a reckless march was made possible only through the result of constant self-emptying. Jang Il-dam’s Dan was finally sublimated into a spiritual dimension. This is the very objective of the dialectic between Han and Dan: the Unity of God and Revolution. It is the state where the inner spirit becomes one with external practice. 

Jang Il-dam was apprehended following a betrayal by a disciple. Just like Jesus, he was subjected to interrogation. During his trial, he declared the following:

My paradise does not reside solely in this land; rather, it is this single, white path (Huin-gil, 흰. 길), like the wind, which begins from this land, passes through Seoul, and stretches toward the world, the cosmos, the heavens, and beyond all time. The path itself is Geungnak(極樂, Paradise), and I am a wayfarer (Nageune, 나그네) walking this path.15

Having reached the final stage of Dan, he was a Nageune. Like a Nageune, he was one who transcended life and death without any lingering attachments. In this way, he became free from the shackles of death. Resurrecting after three days, he severed the head of the disciple who had betrayed him. He then attached his own head to the disciple’s body. His head, which possessed divine wisdom, became the List (cunning) that connected itself to the body that had betrayed him. Thus, the disciple did not perish but continued to live through his physical body. Jang Ildam had both punished and saved his disciple.16

As mentioned previously, he is a butcher. He came from a lineage of butchers spanning three generations. He was the son born of the joining of flesh between a prostitute and a descendant of a family exterminated during the Donghak Revolution; he was the son born of the mingling of bodies between a prostitute and an independence fighter who perished during the Japanese colonial period; and he was the son born of the fusing of flesh between a prostitute and a man branded as a ‘Red’ and killed during the colonial era. The Han of Jang Il-dam resides in solidarity with the Han of the Minjung. Jang Il-dam was thirty-three years old at the time of his death, just as Jesus was. The birth and life trajectory of Jang Il-dam are a perfect replica of Jesus. The Jang Il-dam of 1970 is the re-enactment of Jesus. Kim Ji-ha, who composed the narrative poem of Jang Il-dam, sought to resolve the Han of the Korean Minjung through his poetry.17

Jang Il-dam employed the method of Dan. Initially, it took a linear and unidirectional form, manifesting as quite violent. The act of severing to resolve the Han of the Minjung requires force, for if Han merely leads to retaliation, the cycle of vengeance will continue to circulate endlessly. It must be severed all at once, and violence is the tool utilized at this stage. However, Dan does not signify violence alone. The philosophy of Dan eventually arrives at the path of the Nageune. It brushes away all lingering regrets and resentment. It is more than mere contemplation; without restricting its modes, Dan unifies earth and heaven, God and revolution, and earthly and heavenly ways of life.18 Dan leads from violent means to the sublimation of Han into a higher spiritual dimension.19 As Han accumulates, Dan severs and sublimates it. Han accumulates once more, and Dan severs it again. Han and Dan interact, providing opportunities for each other to act and elevating the struggle to a higher dimension. The crux of the matter, however, is that violence inevitably emerges within this process. 

The precise threshold where violence ends and at what point its cessation allows Han to be sublimated into a spiritual dimension remains inherently elusive. The dialectic of Han and Dan is an intersecting dynamic of frequent wounding and binding up. Violence is transitory, directed toward elevation. Its purpose is noble, yet its means are fierce. Violence is merely one of the myriad points that manifest upon the higher plane of Dan. This is the paradox entrusted to the Priest of Han.