When my name was Keoko

Review by Booklist Review

Gr. 5-9. Except for Sook Nyul Choi's Year of Impossible Goodbyes (1991), very little has been written for young people about the Japanese occupation of Korea. Park, who won the Newbery Medal this year for A Single Shard, set in twelfth-century Korea, draws on her parents' experiences as well as extensive historical research for this story. The plot unfolds through the alternating first-person narratives of Sun-hee, who is 10 years old in 1940, and her older brother, Tae-yul. They lose their names and their language when they are forced to use Japanese at school and in public. The far-off war comes closer and hardship increases with brutal neighborhood roundups. Always there are secrets: Who's a traitor? Who's pretending to be a traitor? Sun-hee tries to help her uncle in the resistance, and she's overcome with guilt when she puts him in terrible danger. Tae-yul becomes a kamikaze pilot for the Japanese: he loves learning to fly, but his secret aim is to help the Americans. There's also family conflict, especially about the submissive role of a young girl: does she disobey her father for the good of her country? Why doesn't her father resist? The two young voices sound very much the same, and the historical background sometimes takes over the narrative. The drama is in the facts about the war, and Park does a fine job of showing how the politics of the occupation and resistance affect ordinary people. Be sure to check out Park's Writers and Readers column, "Staying on Past Canal Street: Reflections on Asian Identity," [BKL Ja 1 & 15 02]. --Hazel Rochman

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

"A brother and sister alternate as narrators in this well-constructed novel, which takes place from 1940-1945 in Japanese-occupied Korea," wrote PW in a starred review. "Through the use of the shifting narrators, Park subtly points up the differences between male and female roles in Korean society and telling details provide a clear picture of the siblings and their world." Ages 10-up. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by School Library Journal Review

Gr 6-10-Linda Sue Park's historically and emotionally accurate novel (Clarion, 2002) about Korean life under Japanese domination during World War II helps listeners understand how individuals cope in times of political repression. Sun-hee and Tae-yul, sister and brother, live a middle class life with their father, mother, and uncle. Too young to remember a time when the Japanese were not present and officiating in their homeland, these middle grade children are nonetheless shocked by an edict requiring all Koreans to assume Japanese names. As the war escalates, Sun-hee-now known in public as Keoko-gathers her information about world events mostly by eavesdropping and peppering her slightly older brother with questions. Tae-yul eventually leaves home to join the Japanese forces, and his family believes that he met his death on a kamikaze mission. Since chapters alternate between Sun-hee and Tae-yul's memories, readers know that Tae-yul is probably still alive. Jenny Ikeda reads Sun-hee's chapters while Norm Lee performs Tae-yul's. Lee offers more voicing than does Ikeda, and his Tae-yul sounds youthful, while Sun-hee's timber remains that of an adult. This is an excellent addition to middle school collections, offering an angle that has long been missing from the literary shelf.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA(c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Horn Book Review

(Intermediate, Middle School) The author of this year's Newbery winner turns her attention to a different time period in Korean history. In alternating chapters covering the years 1940 to 1945, young siblings Sun-hee and Tae-yul describe their lives during the Japanese military occupation. Tae-yul admires their uncle, who works for the resistance movement printing an underground newspaper; like Uncle, Tae-yul prefers to take action, and by 1945 the eighteen-year-old finds himself in the thick of things. Younger sister Sun-hee is more like their father, subdued and introspective, rebelling against the occupation in quiet but significant ways. The book's title-a poignant reference to the law that forced Koreans to take Japanese names (Sun-hee becomes Keoko and Tae-yul, Nobuo)-seems an inappropriate choice, as it fails to acknowledge the book's effective use of two narrators. The boy/girl narratives widen the audience, of course, but the structure also allows readers to see events from two sometimes-opposing points of view and to witness two different but equally honorable paths of resistance. While the novel's climax is more manipulative than it is believable, readers caught up in the story won't mind all that much. Not as powerful an account as Yoko Kawashima Watkins's So Far from the Bamboo Grove (rev. 7/86) or Sook Nyul Choi's Year of Impossible Goodbyes (rev. 1/92)-but also a less harrowing one that may provide an accessible introduction to this painful history. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

The author of three novels set in different periods of Korean history (A Single Shard, 2001, etc.) now turns to WWII for the story of a brother and sister and their lives with their parents and uncle. Telling their story in alternating voices, the two siblings offer complementary and sometimes different versions of events. Sun-hee, in the last year of elementary school in 1940, loves studying and is an obedient daughter while older brother Tae-yul loves speed and machines. Their uncle is a source of concern because he publishes an underground, anti-Japanese newspaper. The Japanese had conquered Korea in 1910 and as the war looms their demands on the Koreans intensify. Food grows scarcer and the Koreans, long forbidden to study their own culture and language, now must take Japanese names. Thus Sun-hee becomes Keoko. In one memorable passage, Sun-hee misunderstands an oblique warning from her Japanese friend and assumes that her uncle's life is in danger. He flees, never to be seen again as the war and the post-war communist government in the north keep them apart. This beautifully written story captures these events through the eyes of a very likable young girl. In her voice, readers share the joys of playing cat's cradle, eating popcorn, and tasting American chewing gum for the first time. Through Tae-yul's they experience his gritty determination to join a kamikaze unit in order to protect his family from the suspicious Japanese. There is food for thought when Sun-hee's father tells her that "they burn the paper-not the words" when referring to the Japanese soldiers who destroy her diary. There have been relatively few stories for young readers that are set in Asia during WWII. This powerful and riveting tale of one close-knit, proud Korean family movingly addresses life-and-death issues of courage and collaboration, injustice, and death-defying determination in the face of totalitarian oppression. (afterword, bibliography) (Fiction. 10-15)

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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1. Sun-hee (1940) "It's only a rumor," Abuji said as I cleared the table. "They'll never carry it out." My father wasn't talking to me, of course. He was talking to Uncle and my brother, Tae-yul, as they sat around the low table after dinner, drinking tea. I wasn't supposed to listen to men's business, but I couldn't help it. It wasn't really my fault. Ears don't close the way eyes do. I worked slowly. First I scraped the scraps of food and dregs of soup into an empty serving dish. Then I stacked the brass bowls--quietly, so they wouldn't clang against one another. Finally, I moved around the table and began putting the bowls through the little low window between the sitting room and the kitchen. The kitchen was built three steps down from the central courtyard, and the sitting room three steps up. From the window I could reach a shelf in the kitchen. I put the bowls on the shelf one at a time, arranging them in a very straight line. The longer I stayed in the room, the more I'd hear. Uncle shook his head. "I don't know, Hyungnim," he said, disagreeing respectfully. "They're masters of organization--if they want this done, you can be sure they will find a way to do it. And I fear what will happen if they do. Our people will not stand for it. I am afraid there will be terrible trouble--" Abuji cleared his throat to cut off Uncle's words. He'd noticed me kneeling by the table with the last of the bowls in my hands; I was listening so hard that I'd stopped moving. Hastily, I shoved the bowl through the window and left the room, sliding the paper door closed behind me. What rumor? What was going to happen? What kind of trouble? When I asked Tae-yul later, he said it was none of my business. That was his answer a lot of the time. It always made me want to clench my fists and stamp my foot and hit something. Nobody ever told me anything. I always had to find out for myself. But at least I was good at it. You had to do two opposite things: be quiet and ask questions. And you had to know when to be quiet and who to ask. When was easy. I was supposed to be quiet most of the time. The youngest in the family was never supposed to talk when older people were talking. And girls weren't supposed to talk much anyway, not when men or boys were around. So listening was easy for me; I'd done it all my life. But lots of times I didn't learn what I wanted to know by listening. That was when I had to ask questions. I could have asked my mother, Omoni, when we were doing housework together. But I'd learned that it was useless to ask her most questions. Either she didn't know the answer or she wouldn't tell me. Men's business, she'd say. Abuji knew almost all the answers. I was sure of that. But I hardly ever asked him. He always said exactly what he wanted to say, and no more. That left Uncle and Tae-yul. Usually, I tried Uncle first. He was quite cheerful about answering me most of the time. And when he wasn't around, I'd ask my brother. Firstborn son, only son--the men usually included him in their talks. Tae-yul was thirteen, three years older than me. He was often impatient when I asked questions, and acted as if I were stupid for asking in the first place. But that was better than not knowing things. Listening and asking weren't enough, of course. After that came the hard part--the figuring out. They'll never carry it out. . . . They're masters of organization. . . . I knew who "they" were. The Japanese. Whenever there was talk that I wasn't supposed to hear, it was almost always about the Japanese. A long time ago, when Abuji was a little boy and Uncle just a baby, the Japanese took over Korea. That was in 1910. Korea wasn't its own country anymore. The Japanese made a lot of new laws. One of the laws was that no Korean could be the boss of anything. Even though Abuji was a great scholar, he was only the vice-principal of my school, not the principal. The person at the top had to be Japanese. The principal was the father of my friend Tomo. All our lessons were in Japanese. We studied Japanese language, culture, and history. Schools weren't allowed to teach Korean history or language. Hardly any books or newspapers were published in Korean. People weren't even supposed to tell old Korean folktales. But Uncle did sometimes--funny stories about foolish donkeys or brave tigers, or exciting ones about heroes like Tan-gun, the founder of Korea. Tae-yul and I loved it when Uncle told us stories. We still spoke Korean at home, but on the streets we always had to speak Japanese. You never knew who might be listening, and the military guards could punish anyone they heard speaking Korean. They usually didn't bother older people. But my friends and I had to be careful when we were in public. Every once in a while another new law was announced, like the one when I was little that required us to attend temple on the Emperor's birthday. I decided that this must be the rumor--Abuji and Uncle had heard about a new law. I was right. 2. Tae-yul Sun-hee is a real pain sometimes. Always asking questions, always wanting to know what's going on. I tell her it's none of her business, which is true. Abuji would tell her if he wanted her to know. But I don't know what's happening either. Why hasn't he told me? It's not like I'm a little kid anymore--I'm old enough to know stuff. One day I get home from school and Uncle comes in right after me. He's early, it's way before dinnertime. He's got a newspaper in one hand, and he walks right past me without even saying hello. "Hyungnim!" he calls. Abuji is in the sitting room. Uncle goes in and closes the door behind him. I listen hard, but I can't hear anything--until Uncle raises his voice. "I won't do it!" he shouts. "They can't do this--they can't take away our names! I am Kim Young-chun, I will never be anyone else!" Omoni and Sun-hee come out of the kitchen and look at me. I turn away a little, annoyed that I don't know what's going on. Just then Abuji opens the door and waves his hand toward us. So we all go into the room. Uncle is pacing around like crazy. Abuji reads out loud from the newspaper: "'By order of the Emperor, all Koreans are to be graciously allowed to take Japanese names.'" "'Graciously allowed . . .'" Uncle says. His voice is shaking, he's so mad. "How dare they twist the words! Why can't they at least be honest--we are being forced to take Japanese names!" Abuji reads some more to himself, then says, "We must all go to the police station in the next week to register." Uncle curses and pounds his fist against the wall. My name, Tae-yul, means "great warmth." My grandfather--Abuji's father--chose it. It's one of our traditions for the grandfather to do the naming. Excerpted from When My Name Was Keoko by Linda Sue Park All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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