Honey in the Wound by Jiyoung Han weaves a story of broken silences in the wake of brutality and the connections that give voice to those silences. Magical moments live in the tears that grow into grass and a tiger that can rescue, but not save, the fate of her human family. And in the way mothers attend to each other while their dead childrenโs ghosts cry out. And in the transformation of gifts into love, resistance, and freedom.
Not until Young-Ja unearths the swell of grief for the granddaughter who resembles her long-gone father does she start to free herself from the merciless shame of her enslavement. Grandmother and granddaughter lift the veil to show that silence is never silent.
These forgotten women who were used as stock to help men forget their brutalities or provide relief to soldiers, finally use their bodies to protest the lapses in historyโs memory and their words to help us all โlearn and unlearnโ and to show โhow beliefs are made and taught.โ
As much as I wanted Young-Ja to talk, I felt protective of all sheโd been through and understood if she chose silence. I also rejoiced when the wisdom of young Rinako, simply wanting to be near her grandmother, allowed Young-Ja to finally release her voice, her tears, and her story.ย
Rita Hickey: When you read about those nine surviving comfort women, did you know right away that you would use mystical elements, or did that develop in the writing?
Jiyoung Han: I leaned on magical realism and folklore from the start, as I tend to gravitate to them most as a reader. Of course, magical realism is a boon for writing as well; itโs a super pliable device that has as much aesthetic as functional value. Honey in the Wound deals with such brutal colonial legacies that I wanted its more fantastical elements to offer a counterbalance in tone, one thatโs more hopeful, or even sometimes whimsical. Just to give the reader a throughline of light to keep moving forward. But beyond these flights of fancy, the magic is critical to amplifying the novelโs motifs on resistance, particularly as it highlights the agency and resilience of women with special โgifts.โย
RH: The characterโs names seem specific and meaningful โ did you know going in, or did they inform you as you wrote?ย
JH: Yes, thank you for noticing! All names have baseline Chinese characters with intentional meanings. For example, Dahn, the first father we see in the book, is a large, taciturn man whom I wanted to liken to a bear. His name comes from ๆชๅ (๋จ๊ตฐ, DanโGun), the mythical founding king of Korea born from a god and a bear. ๆช is also associated with the iron birch tree, which has wood so dense it doesnโt float in water. Feng and Fenghuangโa stern mistress and her secret-filled teahouseโboth mean phoenix (้ณณๅฐ). Bailongโthe Chinese moniker of the dashing resistance fighter Baek Yong-Wooโmeans white dragon (็ฝ้พ). The phoenix and dragon are often paired in Chinese mythology, which I wanted to represent in Fengโs and Bailongโs partnership. These underlying meanings kept me anchored in a consistent imagination space when thinking about character behaviors and enabled me to tap into an established canon of cultural symbolism.
RH: The way magical realism is incorporated allowed for a hope to exist when all felt hopeless. Is magical realism a part of Korean culture and storytelling that you wanted to incorporate?
JH: Korea upholds a strong tradition of folklore, which certainly overlaps with magical realism. Part I of Honey in the Wound is set exclusively in Korea, and it is by design the most mythical in structure and tone. I wanted to harken back to a pre-colonial, agrarian era when tigers still roamed the mountains, and people lived very closely in sync with the earth, a time when these folk oral traditions would have been an even more salient part of quotidian life. I think I would have struggled to recount so much Korean history and present its culture without any incorporation of folklore, which permeates everything from our speech and proverbs, our relationship with fate, our moral reference points.
On a more contemporary note, there are some very exciting living Korean authors who have had a lot of success with literary magical realism. Cheon Myeong Kwanโs Whale, for example, was a huge source of inspiration for me with its fable-like story structures and use of magical realism in unpacking the complexities of post-Korean War reconstruction.ย
RH: Did you grow up with that kind of fantastical whimsy as part of your own imagination?ย
JH: Iโve always been drawn to the fantastical; some of my earliest memories involve obsessing over Asian folklore and Western fairy tales alike. Iโd say my imagination has always been more โconsumerโ than โproducerโ though, and a voracious one at that. For most of my childhood I devoured as many books and movies as I could with no real discernment, everything from The Bailey School Kids to Dickens, from Totoro to Amadeus. I like to think RPGs like FFVII and The Ocarina of Time were also responsible for a big part of my cognitive development. Even as an adult decades later I find that few things in life bring me as much joy as losing myself in a rich fictional world that some blessedly inventive people have made available for public consumption.ย
RH: When you were young, did you have an elder who told you stories?
JH: Child me was hungry for stories from all sources โ books, movies, games, TV, parents at bedtime. I even made my grandmother make up stories about the pastoral images on her mother-of-pearl traditional Korean wardrobe every time I visited her apartment. There wasnโt a single person that I associate most strongly as my source of stories because I pretty much asked everyone in my life to tell them to me. It may have been exhausting for the adults in my life but I certainly benefited.
RH: Infusing Myoung-Okโs tears, Jung-Soonโs voice, and Young-Jaโs food with powers provides such wonderful vehicles to tell parts of this story โ how did those come to you?ย
JH: These powers were meant to represent the agency of ordinary, everyday women, especially in contexts where they didnโt have much of it. Not only was Korea annexed by Japan for the first half of the 20th century, it is a country with deeply patriarchal and Confucian roots that have limited womenโs place in society. As such, I wanted to subvert โtypicallyโ feminine traits that are often seen as weaknessesโemotions, chatter, domestic dutiesโand present them as uniquely powerful assets. These womenโs power-infused emotions and words are actively used to fell their enemies as much as theyโre used as balms that can bring comfort to loved ones in the face of deeply cut colonial wounds.
RH: I could be reading this wrong, but I sensed a hint of almost compassion in the narrative that Tayijiโs opium den existed to quell the guilt of the evil behavior. Although consistent throughout is the idea some exist to serve as a balm to anotherโs discomfort and the services are an intention to forget/exorcise their demons. I didnโt want to see the soldiers as human, but this humanized them a tad for me (an infinitesimal amountโฆ) and wondered how intentional that was on your part.
JH: Youโre not wrong. War is a terrible thing that leaves no one free of cost. While I have little sympathy for people enacting military aggression, there can be some vulnerability to being a cog in the overwhelming grind of the state war machine. Itโs still individuals in there, and not everyone takes to their roles in the same way. Tayiji specifically looked to exploit those cracks of remorse. His primary intent was to take as many soldiers out of commission with opium where he could, neutralizing the ranks one by one as his unique brand of resistance. Any temporary soothing of soldiersโ guilt that may have resulted was more incidental side effect than goal, but I think Tayiji does have a merciful side to him that wouldnโt get too fussed about a broken man finding reprieve. Of course, opioids are a sort of dressing, not something on their own that can bring true resolution to the mindโs darkness, and I think he recognized that, too.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jiyoung Han was born in Seoul, Korea, and grew up in the American Midwest. She has lived and worked in four continents but now calls San Francisco home. When not writing, she conducts research in climate change and human decision-making.ย Honey in the Woundย is her debut novel.
ABOUT THE INTERVIEW: Rita Hickeyโs writing has appeared in Rum Punch Press and most recently she opened the Women in Noir reading for the 2025 Beacon LitFest. In past lives she wrote, produced and performed in an educational theater company out of Brooklyn and ran creative writing workshops on Rikers Island for women and men. She lives in Manhattan and is at work on her first novel.