Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood

The preface to Lost Names is a speech Kim gave at the Fiftieth International PEN (Progressive Education Network) conference in 1987. Kim describes the difficulty reconciling being an Asian writer who writes in English. Some critics refused to recognize him as a Korean or Korean American writer until he wrote in Korean for the first time.

In a section of the speech that Kim titles “Remembrance of Things Lost,” he describes the Korean term Han, a uniquely Korean sentiment that is comprised of “human responses and reactions to what we may call man’s inhumanity to man” (10). Though he views Han as the most essential element of Korean literature, he has renounced it. Kim lived through “the Japanese domination of Korea, the Soviet occupation of North Korea, and the American occupation of South Korea” (11), and he fought in the bloody Korean war. Kim believes that Han led Koreans into becoming complacent victims.

Kim’s says that his writings attempt to rediscover things lost to him, as well as Koreans in general. He notes that Korean history is marked by loss derived from repeated defeat and colonization. The Japanese even forced Koreans to adopt Japanese names. He believes that the proof of life is claiming a moral victory by coming to terms with the losses of the past.