Recently I came across a book of memoirs by Kim Yong-chol, professor emeritus of Sungkyunkwan University. The book, “A Lone Lighthouse Keeper: Memoirs of Kim Yong-chol,” is the author’s reminiscence of the particularly turbulent period of modern Korean history that he has lived through.
Indeed, Kim’s life is an embodiment of modern South Korea itself, and his autobiography is an important social document vividly depicting nearly all the major events that occurred in the 20th century.
When the author was born, Korea was under Japanese rule. Thus, Kim had to speak Japanese at school, deprived of his native tongue. Then the liberation came in 1945, but not without the Soviet military government in the North and the US military government in the South. In his book, Kim recollects the turbulent situation in the North at the time: for example, the rape and plunder of the Soviet troops and the omnipresent Soviet flags that overpowered the Korean flags.
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