I couldn't imagine ever changing my name, especially not if the government was forcing me to change it. This is what happened to Tae-yul and Sun-hee in When My Name Was Keoko, when the Japanese government took control of Korea and forced all the Koreans to take Japanese names. The book tells the story of a young girl and her brother growing up Japanese Korea during World War Two. I think that Sun-hee really struggles with the issue of being true to the ones she love.
This shows up with Sun-hee's friend Jung-shin. In one part of the book Jung-shin's sister is going to be chosen to work in Japan, but the commander says to pick another girl. Sun-hee realizes this must be because Jung-shin's father is a "chin-il-pa", a friend of the Japanese, the chin-il-pa are looked at as traitors by other Koreans. Sun-hee and Jung-shin become distant after this incident. Sun-hee notices that before the discovery that Jung-shin dad is a chin-il-pa, they were just to girls who were friends, but once again the complications with Korea and Japan ruined it. Later in the book, a few months later, Sun-hee finds Jung-shin and asks her to be friends again. She really learns to other come their differences and be friends with her despite that her dad is a chin-il-pa. I think that this really shows her internal strength.
I think that it would be really hard to live in a place with so many laws against your nationality. I think that the Japanese government is doing a really cruel thing by trying to take away the Korean aspect of Korea. Sun-hee really shows that the power of friendship is so much stronger than anything that the government can do. It is quite a feat for a girl of the age of 13. I think that when people are exposed to drastic situations they have the strength to push through things, and this is shown in When My Name Was Keoko. I wish I could have the strength to do what Sun-hee has done, she is really an inspiration to not care about race or creed, but who they are on the inside.
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