The Vegetarian, a Phantasm on Passive Resistance

 

The main character, Yeong-hye, a hitherto ordinary Korean wife has a dream, after which she decides to become a vegetarian.  Her family and friends aren't interested in her opinion, her dream.  They want her to conform to their opinions, the common ideas of her Korean culture, but she resists, quits wearing a bra as well.  Her father hits her, and her husband leaves her, but she doesn't submit.

Yeong-hye's brother-in-law, her sister's husband, a photographic artist of sorts, finds the relatively isolated Yeong-hye the perfect object (victim) for an off-beat, semi-pornographic video he wants to make.  He approaches, slowly seduces, Yeong-hye into cooperating with his project which involves painting her naked body with flowers.  She is rather haphazardly returning to nature in her thinking and so goes along with his plan.  After fully painting her, he wants to make love to her.  But she objects because he doesn't have any flowers painted on himself.   So, he rushes off and gets an old girlfriend to paint flowers on him, rushes back, gets Yeong-hye to make love with him, while he records the whole thing.  He and Yeong-hye fall asleep on the floor of his studio.  When they wake up, the artists wife, Yeong-hye's sister is there.  She tells them that they are both obviously insane and that she is having them committed to a mental institution.  The authorities arrive and take them away.

Yeong-hye at the mental institution moves beyond vegetarianism and quits eating anything as well.   Her sister, In-hye, admits to herself that she had her sister committed in order to punish her, but she won't admit that and renounce the decision that got Yeong-hye committed.  She lets the authorities at the mental institution try their best to get Yeong-hye to eat, but Yeong-hye's strength and resolve is too much for them.  In a protracted, ugly battle, witnessed by her sister, Yeong-hye succeeds in starving herself to death.

I won't promise that what I have written here is what Han Kang had in mind.  When I think about what that might be, I recall the softening and poetical beauty of Yeong-hye's resistance and refuse to give up my theory -- not that I'd be willing to starve myself to death in support of it.