Korea is a country that has faced many hardships; Japanese occupation, American imperialism, War, losing family members due to the country dividing, and enslavement. It wasn’t until recently that Korea (at least South Korea) has been able to be nearly free of being controlled from outside forces, but the memories of these horrors are still alive in people today as many of the atrocities only happened a few decades ago. A way the Korean people describe their hardships is through the word ‘Han.’ The meaning of ‘Han’ is hard to find in English. There is no true definition of the word, only definitions that sort of describes what this word means. The definition of Han in Korean is something that is unique to the people of Korea. The best way English can describe Han is that it’s an emotion that is a form of resentment and hatred. The word comes from the Chinese Character 恨 (Han) which means resentment, hatred, or regret. Han, in Korean, has many different translations in English, but no word truly describes what it means; even native-Koreans change their definition of what ‘Han’ is. Suh Nam-Dong, a Minjung Theologian, describes Han as “a feeling of unresolved resentment against injustices suffered, a sense of helplessness because of the overwhelming odds against one, a feeling of acute pain in one’s guts and bowels, making the whole body writhe and squirm, and an obstinate urge to take revenge and to right the wrong—all these combined.” Others define Han as a mixture of sorrow and resentment, but with tinges of hope within the sadness and anger. The Korean definition of ‘Han’ didn’t exist until the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula. This word became popular to describe the shared suffering of the Korean people under oppression and occupation. Han isn’t something you can define, it is something you feel. An academic journal written by Heather Willoughby, mentions a quote from the Korean author Lee Oh-young, author of the book On Crying, which talks about the relationship between Koreans and crying. “In sorrow [Koreans] cry, in hunger they cry, and in grievance they cry. Even when they are merry they cry because they are happy…One cannot speak of Korea without mentioning crying and tears. Not only do we cry but we hear everything as crying. It all begins with the word ‘to cry.’ When we hear any sound, we automatically call it ‘crying.’ We translate the English ‘birds sing’ as ‘birds cry.’ Although ‘sing’ means to sing a song, we express it as crying because the same bird sounds which Westerners hear as a merry song, we hear as a sad crying” (19, Willoughby, The Sound of Han). Han is the suffering, sorrow, resentment, and anger that is shared among the Korean people. They have found a way to deal with the suffering of their country as a whole. and found a way to deal with the emotions together.