Japanese-occupied Korea, Lost Names blurs the
boundaries between fiction and nonfiction. The
narrator of the stories—unnamed, but sharing
Kim’s biographical background—portrays the oc-
cupation with the insight and candor of a child,
though constantly moving backward and for-
ward in time to place the events within an act of
remembering. Memory, while not an easy fix or
unproblematic salve for the narrator, remains the
imperative that drives each of the seven distinct
stories forward. What such stories reveal, and what
they conceal, allows Kim to demonstrate the com-
plexity of recapturing the past.
Ordered chronologically within the book, the
seven individual stories—“Crossing,” “Home-
coming,” “Once upon a Time, on a Sunday,” “Lost
Names,” “An Empire for Rubber Balls,” “Is Some-
one Dying?” and “In the Making of History—To-
gether”—cover the latter years of the Japanese
occupation and colonial domination of Korea,
spanning the period from 1932 to 1945. The
narrator’s father, an ex-revolutionary and former
prisoner of the Japanese occupiers, constantly im-
plores his son never to forget; never to lose sight of
his Korean identity; never to accept the Japanese
occupation. This father-son relationship develops
throughout the book, as both must confront the
realities of an unacceptable present while never
fully ceding their identity as Koreans.
The story from which the title of the book
derives its name—“Lost Names”—captures the
difficulties of maintaining a national and cul-
tural identity under the domination of a foreign
power. At the outset of World War II, at the height
of Japanese imperialism, the occupying Japanese
forced the Koreans to not only completely give up
the teaching and learning of Korean history and
language but also to give up their names. Painfully
and simply, the narrator notes, “Today, I lost my
name. Today, we all lost our names. February 11,
1940” (115). This act of renouncing the family
name proves shameful and disgraceful to the fa-
ther; the son, on the other hand, understands that
the act of remembering functions to ensure that
nothing remains lost for long.
While Kim sets a somber tone throughout the
majority of the work, the narrator’s childhood
exploits and misadventures provide entertaining,
hopeful, and rather upbeat moments that punc-
tuate each individual story. Whether conspiring
with his fellow student workers to puncture all
the rubber balls to be collected by the school’s ad-
ministrators or subvert school dramatic produc-
tions to honor the Japanese emperor, the narrator
reveals a worldview still fascinated by the human
spirit and refuses to let the cruelties and harsh-
ness of the occupying force subdue his youthful
optimism. Yet the tragic state of affairs under the
Japanese occupation lurks in the shadows of even
the most optimistic and carefree moments of the
narrator’s childhood.
The final story of the book, “In the Making of
History—Together,” culminates in the withdrawal
of the Japanese after their unconditional surrender
at the end of World War II, but the story casts an
almost ambiguous tone on the developing events.
Father and son discuss the liberation, yet come
away with no simple answers concerning the future
of the Korean nation. As J. Michael Allen remarks,
“The post-liberation generation, as the conclud-
ing chapter’s title suggests, must become masters
of their future, making history rather than watch-
ing it happen, becoming the shapers of their desti-
nies rather than pawns in others’ power schemes.”
However, as Kim’s earlier novels The MARTYRED
and The INNOCENT demonstrate, the formation of
a Korean nation requires the loss of human lives,
the spread of even more violence, and an embit-
tered struggle to define a national identity.Bibliography
Allen, J. Michael. Review of Lost Names: Scenes from a
Korean Boyhood, Korean Studies Review 2 (2001).
Available online. URL: http://www.koreaweb.ws/
ks/ksr/ksr01-02.htm. Accessed October 8, 2006.
Zach WeirLouie, David Wong (1954– )
On the basis of his first two books—a collec-
tion of short fiction, PANGS OF LOVE AND OTHER
STORIES (1991), and a novel, The BARBARIANS ARE
COMING (2000)—David Wong Louie has estab-176 Louie, David Wong