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Richard Kim Lost Names Essay

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Lost Names is a book that has both the realism of remembered experience and the imagination of a series of stories. It puts a human face on the colonial period that can easily be overlooked in more than academic treatments. Richard Kim paints a grim picture of the height of the Japanese occupation from 1932 to 1945 in Korea. Throughout Lost Names, we are shown seven different scenes from a boyhood and early adolescence. What Richard Kim wants us to learn from Lost Names solely depends on the reader, as everyone can take away something different. Each chapter is a separate story; however, taken together, they form a vivid picture not only of life under colonial rule but of family dynamics as well. The first chapter, “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 …show more content…

Recognizing this, the father expresses his hope for the future stating, “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. One can learn that 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. 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 actually belong to

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The novel Lost Names by Richard Kim gives a glimpse of Korea during the period in which Japan had colonized it and had been conquering a plethora of other Asian countries. It follows the life of a young boy as he and his family live in the colonized country of Korea and speaks of how their lives were effected. The writing is accomplished in giving testimony to the occupation of the Japanese of Korea and its people and the ways in which they enforced allegiance to Japan. By means of policy, law, and everyday practices the Japanese attempted to create an allegiance to themselves from the Koreans; while the majority of these succeeded at some level they also created a deep set hatred by the people because of the oppressive practices used.

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