[KS] KSR 2002-02: _Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood_

[Stephen Epstein]

Richard E. Kim, _Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood_. Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998.  198 pages $12.95
(paper).  ISBN: 0-520-21424-2.

Reviewed by J. Michael Allen
Brigham Young University-Hawaii


Most readers of this review have probably already read Richard Kim's _Lost
Names_.  Those who have not should do so at the first opportunity.  The
reissue of _Lost Names_ will be particularly welcome news to two groups:
anyone interested in the experience of Koreans living under Japanese rule,
and any teacher looking for a non-academic book on the colonial period to
assign to students studying Korean history.  It is an engaging book, both
because of Kim's easy style and because of the youthful perspective from
which the story is told.  Richard Kim shuns questions of whether the book
is fictional or autobiographical, pointing out that while he wrote it as
fiction, it has generally been regarded as an account of his own early
years.  It is as a result of this "happy predicament" (in Kim's words) that
the book has both the realism of remembered experience and the imagination
of a series of stories.  Kim has stated elsewhere that "everything in the
book actually happened" to him.  (See _Education About Asia_, Vol. 4, No. 2
[Fall 1999], p. 23.)  Nevertheless, he maintains that because he arranged
and interpreted events while writing the book, it is not strictly
autobiographical.  More important than questions about the book's genre,
however, is the fact that it puts a human face on the colonial period that
can easily be overlooked in more academic treatments.

Each chapter is a separate story, which means that a teacher using this
book would not necessarily have to assign the entire thing.  Taken
together, however, they form a vivid picture not only of life under
colonial rule but of family dynamics as well.  The incidents cover the
period from 1933 (when the storyteller/author was one year old) to
liberation in 1945.  "Crossing" tells the story of the family's departure,
across the frozen Tumen River, from Korea to Manchuria, where the father
has taken a job at a Christian school shortly after his release from
prison.  The setting sun, "plummeting down toward the frozen expanse of the
northern Manchurian plain," seems symbolic of the ultimate demise of the
Japanese empire, even in the first story, twelve years prior to Japan's
defeat.

The father's prison term is referred to a number of times throughout the
book, and while it is never clear exactly what his offense was, the manner
in which it is mentioned makes it clear that it had something to do with
the authorities' perception that he was acting against them.  It also
becomes clear over the course of the book, however, that the narrator's
father has earned the respect not only of his fellow Koreans, but of many
Japanese colonial officials as well.

The family returns to Korea after a few years in Manchuria.  The remaining
chapters of the book chronicle school activities (including humiliation and
intimidation at the hands of other pupils as well as teachers), various
kinds of mobilization ordered by colonial authorities (from the collecting
of rubber balls for recycling to the building of a runway), and the efforts
of a family (one that clearly has considerable local prestige) to cope with
unwelcome colonial rule while trying to avoid an oppressive siege mentality
at home.  The title story comes from the requirement that, as subjects of
the Japanese emperor, Koreans adopt Japanese names.  The day when the boy's
father takes him to the local police station in order to register their new
names is clearly a painful one for the family.  The occasion becomes a
chance for the father to teach his son a lesson about both national shame
and personal dignity.  After the registration is over and the family has
been officially renamed Iwamoto, the father, with tears in his eyes, tells
his son: "Take a good look at all of this. . . .  Remember it.  Don't ever
forget this day."

Kim suggests the range of reactions to Japanese rule-from cooperation to
resistance-that we know of from other sources.  There is a mysterious uncle
in Manchuria, clearly part of an anti-Japanese resistance movement.  One of
the boy's teachers, who rescued him from a beating overseen by a Japanese
teacher, joins this uncle, only to be captured and killed as a spy in
Mongolia by Russian forces.  On the other end of the scale, there are
Koreans like the detective who interrogates the boy's father at the
beginning of the narrative, someone the boy's mother describes as the
foreigners' hound.  But equally important (and perhaps more representative)
are all the Koreans found between these two extremes.  These Koreans are
not as visibly represented in Kim's volume, but one always knows they are
there.  Similarly, Kim does not want to depict Japanese as easily
pigeonholed, cardboard characters-even those who officially represent the
Japanese state that has subjected Korea.  He issues no blanket
condemnations of Japan or Japanese.  The group whose motivation and actions
he wishes to analyze most is his own countrymen.  In the 1999 interview
referred to earlier, Kim declared that one of his missions in life was "to
teach Koreans to accept responsibility for their lives, to stop blaming
others, the Japanese, the Chinese.  We lost it. . . . but many Koreans
would like to think someone grabbed it . . . thinking this justifies
hatred.  I've often said that Koreans need a national psychotherapy
session, a large couch.  Why are we as we are, why is self-examination such
a rare commodity in Korean life?"  (_Education About Asia_, p. 25.)  A
"national psychotherapy session"?  This is quite a call.  But such a frank
statement, it seems to me, suggests that Kim himself has done rather a lot
of thinking about responsibility and history, and about just what else may
have been "lost" along with Korean names.

The final chapter, "In the Making of History-Together," is powerfully
evocative of the ambiguity both of liberation and of the liberated.  The
boy and his father have a conversation about what liberation means for them
and for all of Korea.  The boy has previously told his mother of his
feelings of shame that liberation was not won by Koreans, but given to
them.  "It just dropped from the sky," he had complained.  "Just like that.
A present!"  His father, who knows of this conversation, tries to explain
not only what liberation means, but what he sees as the burden of
successive generations of Koreans.  "You are right.  Our liberation is a
gift, so to speak, and not something that we have fought for and won.  That
bothers me, too, son.  And perhaps that's why most of us, the grown-ups,
are confused and bewildered and feel at a loss."  He then explains that his
own father's generation was "ineffective and disorganized-not only aimless
but also very stupid in many ways, although the royal dynasty had more to
be blamed for than anyone else in the country.  They let the country get
kicked around and, finally, sold down the river, you might say.  Then, they
handed it over to my generation and said, 'Look, we are sorry about this,
but there wasn't anything we could do to save the country.'  Now, what
could my generation do?"  The generation that led Korea in 1910 could have
prevented the loss of the country, the father argues, and could have put in
place many needed reforms, but as Japanese rule became more and more
entrenched after annexation, it was too late.  For this generation, the
burden was survival: "We could do very little, too, except, perhaps . . .
to sustain our faith and remain strong in spirit, hoping, just hoping,
that, someday, a day like today would come.  Survival, yes, that's it.
Survival.  Stay alive.  Raise families, our children, like you, for the
future.  Survival, son, that's what my generation accomplished, if that can
be called an accomplishment."

But the torch also passes from the father's generation to the son's.
Recognizing this, the father expresses his hope for the future:  "I am only
hoping that your generation will have enough will and strength to make sure
the country will not make the same mistakes and repeat its shameful
history.  I only hope, son, that mere survival will not become the only
goal of your generation's lives.  There must be more in life than just
that."  This exchange epitomizes both the anguish behind the history of
Korea's liberation, and the multiple possibilities for the future that
liberation held.  The post-liberation generation, as the concluding
chapter's title suggests, must become masters of their future, making
history rather than merely watching it happen, becoming the shapers of
their destinies rather than pawns in others' power schemes.  The book ends
on that note, and on an optimistic determination on the part of the
narrator to ensure that the future of Korea does indeed belong to Koreans.

Since its first publication in 1970, _Lost Names_ has attracted a loyal
following among teachers and students of Korea.  This reissue will make it
even more accessible.  Perhaps it will also lead some readers in the
direction of Kim's other books on Korea (_The Martyred_ [1964]; _The Innocent_
[1968]), helping to ensure that an eloquent voice continues to be heard.


Citation:
Allen, J. Michael 2001
Review of Richard E. Kim, _Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood_,(1998)
_Korean Studies Review_ 2001, no. 02
Electronic file: http://www.iic.edu/thelist/review/ksr01-02.htm