He tries to resist when Japanese soldiers take away his homemade bike.

Tae-yul, on the other hand, is more open about his opposition to the Japanese. She wonders whether it is possible to write Korean thoughts in Japanese. Sun-hee struggles to maintain her Korean identity and wonders what makes her Korean. Sun-hee and Tae-yul have different responses to the events that occur within the short years recounted. Sadly, they are not alone as Japanese expansion spreads to Hong Kong, Singapore, Burma, The Philippines, and New Guinea.

Through the experiences of Tae-yul and Sun-hee we understand what it must have been like for the Korean people to live under the rule of Japanese and their struggle to maintain their national identity.

Linda Sue Park's writing is astonishingly vivid and realistic. Sun-hee works hard in school and especially loves learning kanji, a special and complex type of character writing.In 1942, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese enact many new laws and life gradually becomes more and more difficult. In school, the children sing the Japanese national anthem, recited the Japanese emperor's education policy and learn Japanese alphabet and writing. Sun-hee and Tae-yul live with their father Abuji, their mother Omoni and an uncle who runs a printing business. Sun-hee takes the name Keoko which means 'the sun's rays'. Although they must comply, they decide to make their Japanese names as similar as possible to their Korean names. The story opens in 1940 when 10 year old Sun-hee's family learns that they must take on Japanese names. Author, Linda Sue Park uses two voices to tell her story, that of Sun-hee and her older brother Tae-yul. When My Name Was Keoko tells the story of a Korean family during the period of Japanese occupation in the Second World War. In 1939, Koreans were forced to change their names to Japanese, Korean men were conscripted into fighting in the Pacific War and thousands of Korean women where forced into sexual slavery as Comfort Women. With the advent of the Second World War, a return to stricter military rule began. The effect of Japanese colonialism however, was to modernize and industrialize Korea. After a national protest in 1919, military rule was relaxed and Koreans were allowed extra freedoms. During the early part of colonial rule, Japan ruled directly through the military. Japanese colonial rule of Japan began in 1910 and lasted until the end of the Second World War in 1945 with the defeat of Japan by the Americans.

When my name was keoko sparknotes