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Names and Palimpsest in Linda Sue Park's 'When My Name Was Keoko'

© Irene Tanner-Yuen

When My Name Was Keoko
Linda Sue Park
Format: Hardcover, 208pp.
ISBN: 0618133356
Publisher: Clarion Books
Pub. Date: March 2002

Linda Sue Park's When My Name Was Keoko (2002) is a deceptively simple tale of a family living in occupied Korea. Economically written, the story is told in alternating chapters from the perspective of the children of the Kim family, Sun-hee and her older brother Tae-yul. The novel has a biographical feel to it, in part because of its historical background (it spans the five years during the second world war), and partly due to the convincing voices of its young narrators. The story of wartime Korea and the Kims--Abuji (father) the school's vice-principal, Omoni (mother), Uncle the printer, brave Tae-yul, and perceptive Sun-hee--intersect with themes of childhood, naming, and language with cultural imperialism.

When My Name Was Keoko begins with the Kim family reeling from the latest law imposed by the Japanese: all Koreans must take Japanese names. "'Let them! Let them arrest me! They will have my body but not my soul--my name is my soul!'" declares Uncle. Abuji comes up with a name that will appease the authorities and satisfy his family too: the Kims' ancestors lived in the mountains, and Kim means gold. Renaming his family the Kaneyamas (meaning "gold mountain" in Japanese") is a small rebellion against the law that itself is a symbol for the extent of Japanese imperialism.

The identities, right down to the names, of Koreans are subjugated to the empire. Sun-hee is rechristened Kameyama Keoko, and Tae-Yul is Kaneyama Nobuo. It is the time of the 1940 Olympics. The family listens as a Korean runner competes and wins under his Japanese name Kitei Son and under the Japanese flag, an event that Sun-hee regards with awe when Uncle is arrested and beaten for defacing newspaper photos of Kitei Son. Uncle, furious that Korea's pride should be stolen by the Japanese, protests by scribbling Kitei's birth name and wavy lines over the rising sun of the Japanese flag.

The flag is like neighbour Mrs. Ahn, who refuses to learn more than to count to five in Japanese: "'One hand. Five fingers of thought--that is all I will give them. Not one finger more.'" These are two of the many symbols that figure in the novel as a synecdoche (specific/part representing the general/whole). While recovering from injuries inflicted by the authorities, Uncle draws a forbidden picture of the Korean flag for the children, telling them to bow to it and never forget it. Later, when the Japanese confiscate precious rice and supplies from Korean civilians to aid the war effort, this clandestine patriotism is repeated by Tae-yul's crude carving of the Korean flag on the bottom of a bowl.

When My Name Was Keoko

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