WHILE I TRIED TO BE AS ACCURATE AS POSSIBLE IN MY RECOUNTING OF historical events, I added some fiction to the personal lives of the people affected by these events. The names of the characters, too, except those of well-known historical figures, were changed, and some of the facts, including the contents and dates of the incidents in their lives, were altered to accommodate the narrative integrity and consistency. That history is fiction is a cliché, and trying to explain why I attempted to fill in the blanks in modern Korean history with the information I gathered on my own would be a waste of time. The truth was intentionally cast out of the official version to be replaced by lies and propaganda, so the only way to arrive at the truth again is an exercise of disciplined imagination, and this I tried to do. I must acknowledge the random power of memory to select what remains in a nation’s or an individual’s psyche, but it is with certainty that I can say that I did my best to take into account the unreliable nature of what I remember.
Since the history of my country has to be thoroughly interpolated into the re-telling of my personal childhood, what I know now must remain entirely mixed with what I remember as my distant past. I must give an adult’s sharp language to a child’s inarticulate thoughts. Since it is equally true, however, that the retrospective reassessments that I gained as a grownup gave me newly born layers of interpretation, it was necessary as well to make them distinct from the narratives regarding my past.
I have now lived in the United States for twenty-eight years, for several years longer than I did in Korea, and I can finally look at the little Korean girl I used to be with a sense of humor. Still, however, unable to abdicate the Korean custom of not calling one’s older siblings and parents by their names, I use birth orders and generic nouns to refer to them. Perhaps, I wrote this memoir to let this custom go with laughter.
My family in 1956. I am the baby, and that is my mother holding me. Right of her is Father, and in front of him, holding hands, are my two brothers.
