REVIEW: The Young Will Remember by Eve J. Chung
A sweeping novel about a correspondent trapped behind enemy lines during the Korean War, and the women who help her find her way home, from the national bestselling author of Daughters of Shandong
When I found the courage to lift my head, I expected to stare down the barrel of a gun, but instead there was a woman in front of me, the back of her white skirt embroidered with columns of yellow chrysanthemums.
1950. It’s the coldest winter in decades, and twenty-eight-year-old Chinese American journalist Ellie Chang is on a military flight to cover a battle in the mountains of North Korea when her plane is shot down.
As she emerges from the fallen aircraft onto an icy field surrounded by the enemy, Ellie is sure it’s the end, certain she’ll never make it home to her parents…until a woman pushes her way through the crowd and claims Ellie as the lost daughter that she’s been searching for since the last war ended. Never mind that Ellie doesn’t speak a word of Korean.
Ellie is taken in by her rescuer—a woman who calls herself “Emma”—and the Paks, a pastor’s family. She knows she can’t stay and yet there’s no way she’ll survive on her own.
As the war intensifies, the sky alighting with bombs overhead, Ellie convinces Emma and the Paks to travel south towards an elusive promise of safety, and where Ellie insists they are more likely to find Emma’s real daughter, stuck on the other side of the frontlines.
Emma’s decision to claim Ellie, and Ellie’s choice to take her hand will connect their lives forever.
Moving and triumphant, The Young Will Remember sheds light on a “Forgotten War,” the resilience of love within our darkest histories, and the indefatigable determination of mothers to protect their children.
CW/TW – on page death, descriptions of dead bodies, wartime, mention of past rapes and “comfort women”
The old will die, but the young will remember.
Dear Ms. Chung,
I knew from the blurb that this would be a tough book to read. The reality hit even harder. Ellie and the people who take her in have to face traversing a war zone while Ellie, a Chinese-American, could be arrested if anyone figures out who she really is. Then there’s generational trauma from the Japanese occupation before WWII, followed by WWII, followed by a nation split apart, and the war that sought to reunify it by opposing sides. Through much of that a mother endlessly seeks her daughter who was abducted during the war.
“It hurt to straddle two worlds …”
“I’m from California,” I said. “I’m American but my parents are from Taiwan.”
Ellie Chang’s Chinese parents fled to America. Her brothers have done well with both becoming doctors but Ellie’s determination to be a journalist bewilders her parents. Since China’s entry into the war in Korea, Ellie fears that her family in California might be swept into internment camps as the Japanese were in WWII. When Ellie hops a ride on a USAF plane going to Hagaru-ri to evacuate wounded soldiers, she’s hoping to get a story from an angle male journalists would miss. What she actually gets is to be shot down, watch a friend die beside her, then as she’s faced down by a mixture of North Korean and Chinese soldiers, be claimed by a middle aged woman as that woman’s daughter.
Meanwhile, I was the type who wouldn’t shut up about the sour. I had to warn people. I had to make them see—to show them what was real and raw, unsweetened and uncensored—for without truth, freedom was no more than an illusion, and choice a curated platter. The greatest enemy of democracy was not Communism; it was silence and ignorance, whether willfully undertaken or enforced by law.
That was why I chose to write about war. And that was why I was here, in Korea.
Knowing her fate if this doesn’t work, Ellie plays dumb and follows along as “Emma” leads her away. Emma takes her to family friends who grudgingly (Imo), cheerfully (Baptist Pastor Pak), and quietly (Jae-Min) take her in. But when the winds of war shift, bombing drives them south across a desolate frozen landscape choked with refugees and the dead. Can they escape and will Ellie manage to find her way back across UN lines and to home?
“A place where even the mere freedom to believe is banned is a place where people need something to believe in most.”
I will admit that I don’t know as much about the “Forgotten War” as I should. Most of what I know comes from watching “MASH” and some documentaries. I didn’t know until after his death that one of my uncles served there and that he said it was the coldest he’d ever been in his life. The descriptions of the bombings, the hunger, the devastation, and the desperation are detailed. Ellie has covered the war and seen death but what she and the Paks and Emma trudge past is horrific. Ellie is shocked to realize that she’s become inured to the suffering and deaths.
“Our government was in Sinuiju then, and the Americans bombed there too. They bombed everywhere, even the crops and the cattle, so everyone lost their meat and harvest.”
I stared at the rubble, grateful that she’d said “Americans” when she could have just as easily said “you people”—because this was my people. I felt no responsibility for the sins of Mao, or for the war crimes of the Chinese, for they did not represent me, but when the government that I had pledged allegiance to and paid taxes to destroyed with such wanton disregard, I could not remain unrepentant.
When Emma steps in to save her, Ellie at first thinks Emma has lost her mind. Surely this Korean woman can see that ethnic Chinese Ellie is not her daughter. It takes a while for Ellie to discover why Emma has done what she has. Ever since fourteen year old Yun-Hee was “drafted” during WWII, Emma has tirelessly searched for her daughter. Few of these young women have returned to Korea but Emma asks everyone she meets, everywhere she goes, and writes endless letters to her daughter. The Paks, and soon Emma, are convinced that Yun-Hee is dead but Emma never stops looking and talking to other young women who were also “drafted” and willing to speak of what happened to them.
Seeing that I was upset, Emma said, “There are men in high places who cannot get along, and as a result, we have lost almost everything. Mourn if you must. Pray for their souls if you wish. Either way, we have to get away.”
As Ellie desperately attempts to catch up with UN forces engaged with North Korean and Chinese troops, she begins to see the war from a different side. To the North Koreans, what’s happening is Kim Il-Sung trying to reunify their nation in this War for Liberation. During her earlier trips to Korea, she’d cultivated some sources who hinted that MacArthur wouldn’t baulk at using atomic weapons to end what he’d started by crossing the 38th parallel to drive North Korean troops out of the south.
For us Americans, Korea is a barrier against Communism, but for Koreans, this land is their home. Though many Koreans are fleeing the bombs, there are others, so many others, who have made it clear that they will die before they allow “imperialists” to take it.
They will let their blood soak this earth.
Soon she’s struggling just to survive the bitter cold, lack of food and medicine, relentless bombing, and still hiding her true identity among those who have taken her in. When needed, she invents stories to explain why an ethnic Chinese woman who speaks Chinese and Japanese, but no Korean, is there. Forming bonds with the women around her and discussing with Christian Pastor Pak why he’s stayed in the north instead of fleeing to the south, Ellie sees stories she knows she needs to tell.
“There are some people who will always do the right thing no matter what, and there are some people who will always choose wrong. Most people, however, fall somewhere in between, where their actions depend not only on their circumstances but also on their leaders.”
None of these characters is all good or all bad. Most are just trying to stay alive another day and protect those dear to them. Mistakes are made and secrets are kept in an effort to soften blows that will still bring people to their knees. Along the way, Ellie bends yet doesn’t break. She sees the determination of a woman who saved her and takes up a banner she didn’t know existed.
Love, as heavy as it was, existed in illogical and fragile places; and war, as brutal as it was, required more than food and shelter for survival.
There are a few threads of the story that seem a little hard to believe – mainly Ellie meeting a few characters over and over. At times I want to whisper a few words of advice in Ellie’s ear when her feelings run a little high and she does things like yell out loud in English. Thankfully the Paks and Emma cover this up by telling other Koreans that Ellie is yelling in Russian. There is lots of death and difficult subjects are discussed and portrayed. But I’m glad that I decided to read this one. B
~Jayne
Though Pastor Pak was not here, I heard him too in these lines, in this dissent. Imo began a sermon that I couldn’t understand, but I was in utter awe of her magnitude—in awe of Machiko, the protester and activist, the woman who saw similarities based on shared humanity, over the artificial divisions of religion and nationality.
History was a chain, and too often it was wrapped around women’s necks. In every country, there were monuments dedicated to men who waged wars. How many had anything to honor the women who suffered through them, or survived them?
Some people are better at holding on to their humanity than others. These are often the same people who can help you find yours when you think you’ve lost it—who remind you that a soul is like a shadow, occasionally hidden or forgotten, but never discarded.
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My goodness, Jayne. The quotes you chose for your review compel me to toughen up and read this book.
@LML: Be tough. Be brave. But be prepared.
This might be interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqNIGaCe-tg
Fair warning, this guy is a veteran, is patriotic, and doesn’t hold back with his language but he’s a hell of a story teller.
This same story is also told in an episode in the Netflix Medal of Honor series.