Richard Kim Lost Names Essay

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

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