Richard E. Kim
Richard Eun Kook Kim (1932–2009) was a Korean–American writer and professor of literature. He was the author of The Martyred (1964), The Innocent (1968), and Lost Names (1970), and many other works. He was a Guggenheim Fellow (1966) and was a recipient of a Fulbright grant. His most popular work is Lost Names, a fictional work based on his experience during the Japanese colonization of Korea. Biography Kim Eun Kook, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was born in 1932 in Hamhung, South Hamgyong, a city in what is now North Korea. He was raised first in Korea, then Manchukuo, and then Korea again. His childhood consisted of living during the tail end of the Japanese occupation. After serving in the Republic of Korea Marine Corps and Army, 1950–54, he was honorably discharged as first lieutenant of the Infantry in 1954 and came to the United States in 1955. He was educated at Middlebury College in Vermont, where he studied political science and history, 1955–59; at Johns Hopkins University (M.A. in writing, 1960); at the University of Iowa's Writers Workshop (M.F.A. 1962); and at Harvard University (M.A. in Far Eastern languages and literature, 1963). Career The Martyred, Kim's first novel, is about