When My Name Was Keoko by Linda Sue Park

When My Name Was Keoko tells the story of a Korean family during the period of Japanese occupation in the Second World War. Author, Linda Sue Park uses two voices to tell her story, that of Kim Sun-hee and her older brother Kim Tae-yul. 

In 1910, when Sun-hee's father was a boy and her uncle was a baby, the Japanese took over Korea. With the Japanese came many new laws, such as Koreans could not be in charge of any businesses or schools. 

Sun-hee's father was a great scholar but he could not be the principal of her school. The principal is a Japanese man, the father of Sun-hee's friend, Tomo. Her father is the vice-principal. Their lessons are in Japanese and they study Japanese language, history and culture. They are not allowed to learn about Korean history or language. There are ffew Korean books or newspapers and Korean folktales are forbidden. Nevertheless Sun-hee and Tae-yul loved hearing the folktales their uncle tells them.

However, Sun-hee and her family spoke Korean at home, but were careful to speak Japanese in public. If they were caught speaking Korean in public they would be punished by the military. 

Sun-hee hears her father and uncle loudly discussing something but cannot discover what they are talking about. However, Sun-hee's father and her uncle, Kim Young-chun usher her, Tae-yul and their mother into their sitting room. From the newspaper he reads aloud, "By order of the Emperor, all Koreans are to be graciously allowewd to take Japanese names." While their uncle is enraged, their father explains they must all go to the police station in the next week to register and those who do not will be arrested. Sun-hee, whose name means "girl of brightness" cannot imagine doing this. Nor can Tae-yul whose name means "great warmth". It was a name his grandfather chose, as was the tradition of Koreans to have the grandfather give the name. 

However, Sun-hee's father comes up with a novel solution. Their family name of Kim reflects their heritage: all Kims lived in the mountains and they took the word for gold as their family name. He decides their Japanese name will be Kaneyama: Yama for mountains and ka-ne for gold in Japanese. The Japanese will not know this but it will the way they can honor their family history. He also states that they will randomly choose their first names as they are not their real names. Tae-yul's name becomes Kaneyama Nobuo. Sun-hee and Tae-yul remember how Korean marathoner Sohn-KeeChung was forced to compete under the Japanese flag in the Olympics as Kitei-Son and how their uncle was brought home badly beaten after Sohn's Olympic victory. He and his friends had altered the photos of Sohn to have the Korean flag and used his Korean name in their newspaper.

At school the new names cause confusion and Sun-hee gets into trouble when she mistakenly calls out a friend's Korean name. She receives a canning only because the man who is the Japanese military attache for her school, Onisha-san is in the classroom. This year is Sun-hee's last year of elementary school. In junior high, boys and girls attend separate schools. Sun-hee's Japanese friend Tomo has told her that in the larger cities there are separate schools for Japanese and Korean students. In school, Sun-hee has had to learn three kinds of Japanese writing. One was Kanji which uses a separate picture-character for each word. There are almost fifty-thousand characters but Sun-hee has to learn about two thousand. Sun-hee enjoys learning these characters which she describes as magic to her. Her father Abuji is helping her to learn them by explaining how the characters are formed.

At the end of her fourth year of school, Sun-hee is given a badge for being best in her grade at Japanese. This causes problems for her: on her way home she has stones thrown at her and is taunted with chants of "Chin-il-pa! Chin-il-pa!" which means "lover of Japan". This deeply upsets Sun-hee and she wonders if she is a traitor. Noticing her distress that night during their Kanji lesson, Abuji explains to Sun-hee that character writing has been borrowed by both Korea and Japan from China. The Japanese have adapted it to their alphabet. He tells her that for centuries Koreains have "considered Chines the highest form of learning...'To excel at character writing is to honor the traditions of our ancestors.' " This knowledge helps Sun-hee to understand that she is not a traitor.

Tae-yul considers Kanji "a complete bore" and unlike his grandfather and father he is not "scholarly". He prefers mathematics and science to character writing, although Abuji never complains about his marks.  Instead Tae-yul loves anything mechanical including cars and scooters that can travel fast. He enjoys working with Uncle Kim Young-chun in the workplace at the back of their house, especially working to rebuild an old bicycle. 

There is now a way going on in Europe but also one closer; the Japanese are fighting the Chinese in Manchuria. Because of the war, life begins to change for Sun-hee and her family. Once they ate rice, then barley mixed into the rice, then only barley, and then millet which was usually used for chicken feed. Fortunately they have plenty of vegetables from Omoni's garden. Yet another order comes in that all Rose of Sharon trees weee to be removed and cherry saplings planted throughout the town. Omoni has Tae-yul salvage a young Rose of Sharon tree.

One night after dinner, Uncle tells Abuji that a visitor named Lim has suggested he expand his business. Tae-yul believes that what Uncle is saying is that he wants to take on more Japanese customers. The two brothers continue to argue about something, although neither Sun-hee nor Tae-yul know what is going on. They are determined to find out. Then in late 1941, they learn the Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor, meaning that Japan is now at war with America. As the war continues on life becomes more and more difficult and the Japanese even more repressive. When Uncle is forced into hiding and the Japanese begin to harass Tae-yul as to his uncle's whereabout, Tae-yul makes a decision that may have dire consequences for himself and his family.

Discussion

When My Name Was Keoko is a short novel about the occupation of Korea by the Japanese during the years of World War II. It covers the years from 1940 to 1945.

In the mid-1800's, Korea was one of the last Asian countries still refusing to open to the West. In 1854, Japan finally agreed to establish trade and diplomacy with the West. However, when the Americans, French and British attempted to force Korea to do the same, they were met with strong resistance. The Koreans fought off the Americans and the French in the late 1800's. 

Korea was eventually forced to open their country by Japan, whose influence in the region had grown considerably. The Treaty of Kanghwa was signed by Japan and Korea in 1876 and gave Japan many rights in Korea that were not reciprocated in Japan. Japan fought two wars, against China (1894-95) known as the Sino-Japanese war and Russia (1904-05) known as the Russo-Japanese war for control of Korea. They won both wars and Korea became a "protectorate" of Japan throught American-mediated Treaty of Portsmouth.

In 1910, the Empire of Japan annexed Korea as a colony through the Japan-Korea Treaty. This meant that Korea was controlled by Japan until Japan was defeated by the Allied Forces on August 15, 1945, the end of World War II.From 1910 to 1919, Korea was ruled by the Japanese Military Police.  During this period, the Japanese destroyed many cultural and historical buildings including the Gyeongbokgung Palace. Of its over five hundred buildings, only forty percent remained by 1945. Korean customs and language were forbidden and Korean currency was abolished. The Japanese constructed new infrastructure such as roads, railroads and ports, and built up the country's industry, in effect modernizing the country. 

When the Japanese Emperor died in 1919, the March First Movement for Korean independence was brutally suppressed. After a national protest in 1919, military rule was relaxed and Koreans were allowed extra freedoms. With the advent of the Second World War, a return to stricter military rule began. In 1937, Koreans were forced to worship the Japanese Emperor at Shinto shrines.  In 1938, as means of strengthening the war effort the Japanese began a more strict policy of assimilation in Korea. In 1939, Koreans were pressured to change their names to Japanese, abandoning their use of clan-based Korean names.  Korean newspapers ceased publication in 1940. By 1943, the teaching and speaking of Korean was made illegal. Korean men were conscripted into working in factories and mines in Korea and Japan. It is estimated over five million Koreans were conscripted.  Initially Koreans were coerced into the military by a variety of means (as Park portrays in her novel) but in 1944, Korean men were conscripted to fight.  Tens of thousands of Korean girls aged twelve to seventee were forced into sexual slavery as "Comfort Women." to Japanese soldiers. 

In When My Name Was Keoko, the story is told from the narratives of Sun-hee and Tae-yul. Through the experiences of Tae-yul and Sun-hee Linda Sue Part portrays what it was like for the Korean people to live under the rule of Japanese and their struggle to maintain their culture and national identity. They were not alone as Japanese occupation included Hong Kong, Singapore, Burma, The Philippines, and New Guinea. Sun-hee, as a scholarly young girl, views the Korean occupation and the war from a more philosophical perspective asking questions regarding identity and the effect of war.  Tae-yul is more mechanically minded, liking math and science. He is able to engineer a bicycle out of spare parts and pipes and his fascination with an airplane foreshadows his role later on as a kamikaze pilot. Not scholarly like his sister, Tae-yul is more concerned with honour and resisting the Japanese.

In the novel, Linda Sue Park portrays Korean resistance through almost all her characters. There are many examples of this resistance. Sun-hee's Uncle Kim Young-chun placed the Korean flag in photographs of Korean marathoner Sohn-KeeChung and printed his Korean name rather than his Japanese name of Kitei-Son and was badly beaten. He is part of the resistance publishing a secret newspaper. Sun-hee's father devises a way to keep alive the remembrance of their Korean names. Omoni has Tae-yul save one of the Rose of Sharon trees that they must cut down and destroy on orders from their Japanese occupiers. It is a small tree that they place into a pot and hide when the Japanese soldiers come to inspect their land.When the Japanese order that almost all metal be turned over, including jewelry, Omoni saves a dragon brooch by hiding it in her clothing. Tae-yul carves the Korean flag into the bottom of the gourd bowls he is carving. And Abuji writes articles for his brother's resistance newspaper.  Tae-yul commits the most daring and sacrificial act of resistance by enlisting in the Japanese military to protect his Uncle Kim Young-chun. 

Sun-hee and Tae-yul have different responses to the events that occur within the short years recounted. Sun-hee struggles to maintain her Korean identity and wonders what makes her Korean. She wonders whether it is possible to write Korean thoughts in Japanese. She wants to learn how to write Korean. Her rebellion is quiet and personal. But she also faces inner conflict because she loves learn kanji but is labelled "Chin-il-pa" by her classmates. Her father explains that although this looks like she is a traitor, learn the characters is honouring their ancestors.

When the Japanese soldiers destroy Sun-hee's diary, she doesn't give up. She begins a new diary and pens this poem:

"You burn the paper but not the words.

You silence the words but not the thoughts.

You kill the thoughts only if you kill the man.

And you will find that his thoughts rise again

in the minds of others -- twice as strong as before!"

Sun-hee wonders about what life will be like if the Japanese are defeated. It would mean that they could regain Korean culture: they could use their real names and learn Korean history and use the Korean alphabet again. Sun-hee understands why the Japanese have taken away their words. 

"How could an alphabet --letters that didn't even mean anything by themselves -- be important?  

But it was important. Our stories, our names, our alphabet. Even Uncle's newspaper.  

It was all about words. 

If words weren't so important, they wouldn't try so hard to take them away."

As the war continues on and Sun-hee struggles with exhaustion and hunger she wonders, "If a war lasts long enough, is it possible that people would completely forget the idea of beauty? That they'd only be able to do what they needed to survive and would no longer remember how to make and enjoy beautiful things?" To counter this Sun-hee tries to think of beautiful things every day: the dragon broach buried in their backyard, how the rose of Sharon trees looked when in full bloom.

After the dropping of the leaflets by the Americans telling them they knew that Koreans are not Japanese and they they will not be bombed, Sun-hee wonders, "What did it mean to be Korean, when for all my life Korea had been a part of Japan?"

Tae-yul, on the other hand, is more open about his opposition to the Japanese. He tries to resist when Japanese soldiers take away his homemade bike. When students are given rubber balls in honor of the conquest of Malaya, Burma and Singapore Tae-yul responds  "What they take: our rice, our language, our names. What they give: little rubber balls. I can't feel grateful about such a bad deal."

He makes a courageous decision to enlist in the Japanese military, against the wishes of his parents and his sister who cannot understand his decision.  Park creates tension in the novel as to why Tae-yul might be doing this. Is it his love of planes and his desire to become a pilot? As it turns out that is not the reason Tae-yul volunteers. It is to protect his uncle. "I believe in Uncle and the things he believes in.I'd do anything not to betray him. Anything. Even join the army of his sworn enemy."  Before he leaves he explains to Sun-hee why he has decided to enlist: thet the police know his uncle is working for the resistance, that he is a problem for the Japanese  and they want to stop him. He tells Sun-hee, . "That means his work has been successful, Sun-hee -- that he's still printing the newspaper. And it must be reaching hundreds of people. Maybe thousands. Even if -- if something were to happen to me, it's of no importance compared to what the independence movement would suffer if Uncle is arrested...If they catch him, they'll kill him. The paper he prints-- the truth in words--it must hurt the Japanese as much as a thousand guns." It is a sacrifice that almost costs Tae-yul his life, although he has no intention of dying if possible. 

This leads to a wonderfully crafted climax to the novel as the fate of Tae-yul seems sealed. However, author Linda Sue Park ends the novel happily with the surrender of Japan, and the Kim family being reunited.

Park is direct about some of the brutality suffered under Japanese occupation such as beatings of civilians and hints at others such as the comfort women - the recruiting and wholesale kidnapping of young Korean women for the sole purpose of working in brothels for the Japanese army. The latter is hinted at when the Japanese round up all the young women who are sixteen years and older and ask for volunteers to go to work in textile factories making uniforms. When only a dozen girls volunteer, the Japanese angrily choose more girls to send. Sun-hee doesn't know what this means but she knows it is not as the Japanese are saying.

Although When My Name Was Keoko is fictional, it takes some of its basis in the events that were experienced by the author's parents, Eung Won and Joung Sook, while growing up in Korea and some of the events, such as Sohn Kee Chung who was forced to use his Japanese name of Kitei Son when competing in the 1936 Olympic marathon, and the dropping of leaflets into Korea actually happened. When My Name Was Keoko offers a good starting point for young readers to learn about Korea during the Japanese occupation. 

Book Details:
When My Name Was Keoko by Linda Sue Park
New York: Clarion Books 2002
199 pp.

A Long Walk To Water by Linda Sue Park

A Long Walk To Water weaves together the story of two Sudanese children twenty three years apart: Salva during the Sudan civil war in 1985 and Nya during the Dafur conflict in 2008. They are told in alternating narratives.

It is 1985 and eleven-year-old Salva Mawier Dut Ariik belongs to the Dinka tribe and lives in the village of Loun-Ariik. His family includes his mother and his father who owns many cattle and is the village's judge. He has a younger brother Kuol and two older brothers Ariik and ring who have started school before him. They began to attend when they were ten years old.  His sisters, Akit and Agnath do not attend school but are learning how to keep the house from their mother.  Salva and his brothers as well as his father's sons from hhis other wives, were responsible for walking their cattle to the water holes. 

Salva could only attend school during the rainy season when his family remained in the village. In the dry season, the family moved away. On this day in school Salva is thinking about this while the teacher is talking about the Arabic language - the official language of the Sudanese government in the north.  Suddenly Salva's memories are cut off by the sound of gunfire. The war that has been raging in the south for the past two years has come to his village. The northern part of Sudan is mostly Muslim and they wanted all of the country to be Muslim. But the people in the south are of varying religions and did not want to convert to Islam. They began to fight for independence from northern Sudan.

Salva's teacher tells his students not to run home but to run into the bush which is what Salva does. There are many people in the bush but only around a dozen from his village of Loun-Ariik and no one from his family. The next day Salva and the other refugees walk into a rebel camp where they are sorted into groups. Salva is placed into a group of women and children as he is too young to fight. After walkint to a farm and spending the night in the barn, Salva awakens to find himself alone. He stays on the farm for four days helping the elderly woman but when she decides to leave, she tells him he cannot come with her. 

When another group of Dinka arrive at the farm, they reluctantly agree to take Salva with them. For a week Salva walks with this group, who are joined by another Dinka group. They sleep on the ground and are hungry, but find a beehive and eat its honey and honeycomb. A few weeks later, as their group grows, Salva makes a friend in a boy named Marial who speaks Dinka with an accent. He tells Salva that they are walking east to Ethiopia. Salva has now been walking for a month and his group is now in the land of the Atuot people who are known to Salva's people as "people of the lion". This is because the area is noted for the fierce lions who hunt antelope. gnu and wildebeest. 

Unexpectedly, Salva finds his father's younger brother, his Uncle Jewiir. He was in the army and has a rifle. Several days later, Marial is taken by a lion during the night. When Salva's group reach the Nile, he helps with the building of papyrus reed boats so they can cross the wide river. Salva and his uncle make it across the river and prepare to walk across the Akobo desert.  It takes them three days to cross the desert, with his Uncle Jewiir encouraging Salva each day. His uncle tells him that it is unlikely many people from his village survived the attack and informs Salva that he with not stay at the refugee camp in Ethopia but will return to Sudan to fight. Sadly, Salva's uncle is murdered by a gang of men who set upon the group, robbing them at the edge of the desert.

The deaths of Marial and his uncle make Salva determined to survive. In the Itang refugee camp, Salva is separated from the people he journeyed with and placed with other children. This was not to be the end of Slava's journey however. He remained at the refugee camp for six years until 1991 when the Ethiopian government was near collapse. He and the other refugees were forced at gunpoint by soldiers into the treacherous, crocodile-infested waters of the Gilo River.  From there, seventeen-year-old Salva led over a thousand boys south on a walk that took them a year and a half, to another refugee camp in Kenya. After several stays in refugee camps over the next few years, Salva was finally adopted by an American family and taken to live in Rochester, New York. He learned that he was considered one of the "Lost Boys", boys who had wandered through Sudan for months and years after having lost their families, with no one to care for them.

In Rochester, N.Y. Salva learned English, and eventually after six years was in college studying business. He knew that some day he would like to return to Sudan and help his people but he was not sure how. Then one day Salva received an email from a distant cousin whom he did barely know. The email revealed that his father was alive and in a remote clinic in southern Sudan recovering from stomach surgery. This discovery sets in motion a series of events that will impact the people of Sudan years later. 

Salva's narrative alternates with fictional narrative of eleven-year-old Nya who lives in southern Sudan in 2008. Nya is carring an empty container to fill with water from the pond. It is surrounded by women and girls doing the same as well as herds of cattle brought to drink there. Nya drinks a few gourds of the muddy, brown water, fills her container and begins the journey home with it balanced on her head. After eating boiled sorghum with milk, Nya takes her five-year-old sister, Akeer with her on a second trip to the pond for more water. She will make these twice daily trips for seven month. When the pond dries up they move to a camp near a large lake during the five months of the dry season. They do not stay at the lake for the rest of the year because her tribe, the Nuer and the rival Dinka tribe fight over the land near the lake. Nya's mother worried whenever her father and older brother Dep went out to hunt, that they might be hurt or killed in a confrontation with the Dinka. The lake also dried up but Nya was always able to dig into the wet clay around the lake to get water, However, this often took up most of the day.

Nya's sister Akeer becomes very ill and her parents decide to take her to a clinic where she receives medicine. This makes Akeer well but the doctors tell Nya's parents that her illness is from the water. They are told they must boil the water before they drink it but Nya knows this is not possible. They get so little water from the lake that it isn't possible to boil it before drinking.

When they return to their village, several men arrive and ask the village chief where they get their water. Afterwards the men go out and examine two nearby trees and tell the chief that halfway between the two trees is where they will find water. After they leave, the villagers work to clear the area between the two trees of shrubs and brush. Nya and many of the villagers cannot understand why the two men believe they will find water at this location. 

In 2009, the men return, this time with what Nya calle an "iron giraffe". It is a machine for drilling wells. For three days they use this machine to drill a well for the village. For Nya it will not only mean no more long walks to water but a very different way of life with new possibilities.

Discussion

A Long Walk To Water offers young readers two stories of Sudan, that span twenty-four years, from 1985 to 2009. The main narrative is based on the real life of Salva Dut who was born in the village of Luon-Ariik, in Tonj County, in Southern Sudan. It alternates with a second, shorter narrative of a young girl named Nya who represents the people of Sudan at this time. It is a story of war, loss, separation, perseverance and hope.

Sudan, the largest country in Africa, was beset by civil war beginning in 1983. This war was actually a continuation of the First Sudanese Civil War that occurred from 1955 to 1972. Sudan had been a British colony that was divided into two regions: the north which was considered similar to Arabic speaking Egypt and the south which had more in common with countries like Kenya and Uganda. Sudan was yet another case where British rule exacerbated ethnic, tribal and linguistic division within the Sudanese. In 1946 the British decided to combine the two regions, making the north responsible for the administration of the colony in both the north and the south. Arabic became the lanugage of the Sudan administration in the south. This caused resentment among the southern Sudanese who spoke English and were largely kept out of the administration of the colony. When independence from Britain was granted in 1953, the southern Sudanese had not been allowed to participate in the process and the administration of both north and south was moved to Khartoum. This set the stage for the first civil war. 

The Second Sudanese Civil War occcurred from 1983 to 2005 and saw the displacement of millions of south Sudanese and these deaths of over two million people. Southern Sudan which is made up of mostly Christians, was granted autonomy in 2005. 

Salva Mawien Dut Ariik is the voice of Sudan's recent past, enduring a breathless, fearful flight from school near his village of Loan-Ariik, in the wake of fighting in 1985. Separated from his family, Salva flees into the bush and endures a journey through miles of wilderness in southern Sudan to a refugee camp in Egypt. He spends the rest of his youth and early adulthood in various refugee camps in Kenya. His journey is shown on a map that is included in the front of the novel. Eventually Salva is selected to emigrate to Rochester, New York where he is taken in by Chris and Louise Moore and their family. He is one of the Lost Boys - boys who had lost their homes and families because of the war and had wandered about for many months or years. With the loving support of the Moore family, Salva gets an education and eventually is able to return to Sudan to help his country.

Salva Dut is a study in perseverance and determination. The death of both his friend Marial and his Uncle Jewiir make him determined to survive. He must persevere. Finding himself utterly alone with the loss of his entire family and witnessing the murder of his uncle, Salva struggles to go on but knows he must. "I am alone now. I am all that is left of my family...How can I go on without them? But how can I not go on? They would want me to survive...to grow up and make something of my life...to honor their memories." Remembering how his uncle helped him to look at one thing at a time in the desert, Salva believes this is what he must do now. "I need only to get through the rest of this day, he told himself. This day and no other."

This determination to survive helps Salva years later when he and the other refugees are forced into the Gilo River. In Sudan, as Salva leads a group of over a thousand boys to safety in Kenya he thinks, "I will get us safely to Kenya...No matter how hard it is."  Salva was to remain in the refugee camp Ifo for years but during that time he pushed himself to learn English. As refugees were being adopted by families in the United States, Salva tried to balance his hope that he too might be allowed to go there. 

After years in America, Salva is reunited with his father, nineteen years after he last saw him. His father, desperately sick from guinea worms he had from years of drinking contaminated water, had needed surgery to repair his damaged digestive system. His father's illness gave Salva the idea of how he could help his mother country of Sudan - and that was to dig water wells. But Salva did not just dig these wells for his Dinka people. He also had wells drilled for the Nuer tribe - considered an enemy of the Dinka people - as well. 

Set against Salva's narrative is that of a young Nya who has to walk every day for miles to get dirty water for her family. Her narrative tells just how difficult life is for the people of southern Sudan who must spend most of their day looking for water - any water just to survive. " Home for just long enough to eat, Nya would not make her second trip to the pong. To the pond and back --to the pond and back --nearly a full day of walking altogether. This was Nya's daily routine seven months of the year.  Daily. Every single day." 

Nya's story also portrays the consequences of life without clean water when her little sister Akeer sickens. "Nya knew many people who suffered from the same illness. First cramps and stomachache, then diarrhea. Sometimes fever, too. Most of the adults and older children who fell ill recovered at least enough to work again, although they might continue to suff on and off for years.
For the elderly and for small children, the illness could be dangerous. Unable to hold anything in their systems, many of them starved to death, even with food right in front of them."

The drilling of a water well by Salva's organization offered new opportunities for Nya's village in ways that she never imagined. Her long walk to water was over. Clean water meant that Nya's days were free for learning at the new school that was being built. With an education, Nya can work to further improve life for her people and her quality of life will improve beyond just subsistence. "Next year there would be a marketplace where the villagers could sell and buy vegetables and chickens and other goods. There was even talk of a clinic someday --- a medical clinic, so they wouldn't have to walk so far to get help, as they had to when Akeer was ill." 

The other thing the well brought was the potential for peace between the Dinka and Nuer tribes who had been at war for centuries. The well meant that disputes over limited resources like water would no longer be an issue. No one was to be denied access to the water. It belonged to everyone.

A Long Walk To Water is a short novel that allows young readers to explore the many issues countries in Africa face: conflicts between various tribes, war, the lingering effects of colonialism, conflicts over resources, and how one person can change the lives of millions.

Linda Sue Park is the duaghter of Korean immigrants and was born in Urbana, Illinois. A Stanford graduate in English, she began writing as a young child and published her first children's book in 1999. 

Book Details:
A Long Walk To Water by Linda Sue Park
New York: Clarion Books 2010
121pp.