Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

List examples of colonialism throughout history and/or in modern times. Historically, what are some of the most significant impacts of a colonizer/colonized relationship on each side?

Teaching Suggestion: This Short Answer question introduces students to the book’s historical context in conjunction with Kim’s themes of Hubris of the Colonizer and The Remembrance of Things Lost. Kim’s text is an account of life in Korea under the authority of Japan in the years prior to and during World War II, mostly through his own perspective as a young boy. In his vignettes of life in occupied Korea, Kim recounts the attempts of imperialist Japan to erase Korean culture, including limiting church attendance of Koreans, effacing Korean history and language for young students, and even forcing Korean communities to adopt Japanese names. In this vein, Kim’s text is a larger commentary on the adverse effects of colonizers on colonized communities.

• National Geographic provides an overview of the history of colonialism.
• This “Key Points Across East Asia” info-guide from Weatherhead East Asian Institute’s Asia for Educators site at Columbia University offers bulleted historical facts and summary information for both Japan and Korea.