Senior Paul Kim translates POW story
Posted October 1
Working during whatever spare time he had, senior Paul Kim has finished translating a POW’s harrowing memoir from Korean to English.
Paul had traveled to Korea during his sophomore year to visit family, and it was during this time that he learned about the plight of Korean POWs from the Korean War. Paul received a memoir written by a POW named Young-Bok Yoo, who escaped to South Korea almost 50 years after he was captured. The book made an immediate emotional impact on Paul.
“I learned so many words for ‘pain,’” he said. “It’s astonishing that people don’t realize that there were 60,000 soldiers who never returned home.”
Knowing that more people should know about Mr. Yoo’s story and other POWs like him, Paul offered to translate the memoir, and after more than a year’s work, “Tears of Blood” has finally been published in English.
“There were so many times during the translation that I was close to giving up,” Paul said. “But I was able to focus, and there’s not much I feel I can’t do now.
He marvels at the strength that Mr. Yoo possessed to endure so many hardships as a POW, and he hopes that readers will similarly be moved by his powerful story.
“It is a story of a man who loves his family and simply wants to lead a normal life in the face of endless, needless conflict and suffering. In short, it is a human story,” he wrote in the book’s introduction.
Read Paul’s introduction to "Tears of Blood."
Purchase "Tears of Blood." All proceeds will benefit the POWs.
