When My Name Was Keoko
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40 free When My Name Was Keoko trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
When My Name Was Keoko, Linda Sue Park's 2002 novel, follows Sun-hee and her older brother Tae-yul through the last years of Japanese rule in Korea. Told in their two alternating voices, it begins when every Korean family is ordered to give up its name and take a Japanese one, and it ends with a homecoming nobody expected. This quiz covers the story the way a class discussion would: the characters and what drives them, the small acts of defiance at home and at school, Uncle's dangerous work, Tae-yul's decision to become a soldier, and the real history and family memories the author drew on. It is written for students reading the book, teachers looking for a review, and anyone who wants to check how much of it stayed with them. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Linda Sue Park borrowed the name Keoko from which relative, who was made to use it under Japanese rule?
Her mother
Her mother was renamed Kyoko during the occupation; Park respelled it Keoko so that English-speaking children would pronounce it correctly.
Q 02Which tree, a national symbol of Korea, does Sun-hee's family pot and hide in a shed in When My Name Was Keoko?
Rose of Sharon
Rose of Sharon trees are ordered dug up across Korea, so Omoni has one small tree potted and hidden; the children replant it by the front door once the war is over.
Q 03Believing Tae-yul dead, Omoni puts on mourning clothes of which color in When My Name Was Keoko?
White
White mourning clothes go on the day after a box arrives holding Tae-yul's last letter and a sword, yet he later walks back through the door alive.
Q 04Which Japanese first name does Tae-yul take when his family registers as Kaneyama in When My Name Was Keoko?
Nobuo
Nobuo is the name he must answer to at school, where lessons have turned into lectures and recitations designed to glorify Japan.
Q 05Which American treat from a ration box does Sun-hee's family taste for the first time in When My Name Was Keoko?
Chewing gum
Chewing gum arrives after Japan's surrender in a ration box that also holds cigarettes, rice and crackers, and nobody in the house knows quite what to make of it.
Q 06With which drink does Tae-yul toast the Emperor's shrine before his kamikaze flight in When My Name Was Keoko?
Sake
Sake is raised to the Emperor's shrine before Flight Lieutenant Watanabe gives directions to the target and reads out a goodwill message from the Emperor.
Q 07Tae-yul learns that kamikaze, named for a typhoon that wrecked a Mongol fleet, means what in Japanese?
Divine wind
Divine wind is the meaning, and the suicide pilots so fascinate Tae-yul that he later volunteers for a secret mission that turns out to be theirs.
Q 08What do Japanese soldiers burn in the stove during a night raid on Sun-hee's home in When My Name Was Keoko?
Her diary
Her diary goes into the fire, but Abuji tells her that only the paper has been destroyed, not her words, and the next day she begins a new one.
Q 09Which Japanese friend gives Sun-hee a veiled warning that sends Uncle into hiding in When My Name Was Keoko?
Tomo
Tomo has hardly ever set foot in Japan, yet when the war ends his family is evacuated there, and Sun-hee goes to say goodbye.
Q 10Abuji chooses the Japanese surname Kaneyama in When My Name Was Keoko because it secretly means what?
Gold mountain
Gold mountain lets Abuji obey the law while quietly honoring the family's Korean clan name, a choice Publishers Weekly said spoke volumes about his strength and intelligence.
Q 11What is Sun-hee and Tae-yul's real Korean family name, which the Japanese surname Kaneyama quietly honors?
Kim
Kim is the clan name, shared by Uncle, whose full name is Kim Young-chun, and Abuji reveres it as an old and noble clan.
Q 12What does Uncle secretly produce in When My Name Was Keoko to defy the occupation, while posing as pro-Japanese?
An underground newspaper
An underground newspaper is his real work, which is why his growing trade with Japanese customers alarms Abuji and leaves Tae-yul wondering if he is a collaborator.
Q 13In When My Name Was Keoko, Abuji holds which post at the local school, serving under a Japanese boss?
Vice-principal
Q 21What happens to Tae-yul and his fellow pilots after their failed kamikaze flight in When My Name Was Keoko?
Thrown in jail
Thrown in jail for failing the mission, Tae-yul endures hunger and rats and cannot write home, so his family goes on believing he is dead.
Q 22How does Tae-yul, long believed dead, finally arrive at his family's door in When My Name Was Keoko?
In an American jeep
In an American jeep, driven to the door a few days after a letter at last brings word of Uncle; the family then pampers the son they had mourned.
Q 23What does Sun-hee teach Tae-yul at the close of When My Name Was Keoko, once it is no longer forbidden?
The Korean alphabet
Vice-principal still means answering to a Japanese principal, and the job is borrowed from life: Park's own grandfather was vice-principal of a school.
Q 14The veiled warning Sun-hee receives in When My Name Was Keoko really concerned soldiers coming to seize what?
Metal objects
Metal objects were being collected for the military, so it was Uncle's machinery at risk rather than his life, and Sun-hee blames herself for his flight.
Q 15Which Japanese script does Sun-hee master in When My Name Was Keoko by giving each character a story?
Kanji
Kanji comes easily to Sun-hee, the younger but stronger student, while a frustrated Tae-yul would rather be repairing motor scooters with Uncle.
Q 16Which prized possession, rebuilt from rusty parts, do soldiers confiscate from Tae-yul in When My Name Was Keoko?
His bicycle
His bicycle is taken one winter along with the family's blankets and jackets, and he shouts at Abuji for failing to save it.
Q 17Which tree are Koreans ordered to plant in place of their own national tree in When My Name Was Keoko?
Cherry
Cherry shoots go in because the cherry is Japan's national tree, and soldiers later inspect the family's yard without spotting the tree Omoni has saved.
Q 18Which neighbor is beaten by a Japanese soldier for counting in Korean in When My Name Was Keoko?
Mrs. Ahn
Mrs. Ahn, who lives alone and speaks no Japanese, later lets Sun-hee teach her to count only as far as five, refusing to give the occupiers any more of her mind.
Q 19What does Uncle draw for Sun-hee and then throw into the fire in When My Name Was Keoko?
The Korean flag
The Korean flag is illegal to display, so Sun-hee has never seen one before that morning; once the war is over she plans to sew her own.
Q 20Tae-yul's kamikaze flight in When My Name Was Keoko turns back to base because of what?
Cloudy weather
Cloudy weather wrecks the mission, which spares Tae-yul from carrying out his secret plan never to strike an American ship at all.
The Korean alphabet was something Sun-hee herself could only learn from Abuji after liberation, having long worried that she could write her thoughts only in Japanese.
Q 24Rather than become a scholar like Abuji, what does Tae-yul decide to run at the end of When My Name Was Keoko?
Uncle's print shop
Uncle's print shop will reopen as a tribute to both older men, since Tae-yul has just learned that quiet Abuji took risks of his own for Korea.
Q 25What secret about Abuji does Sun-hee reveal to Tae-yul near the end of When My Name Was Keoko?
He wrote for the resistance
He wrote for the resistance after Uncle vanished, criticizing Japanese education, so the soldiers who raided the house had been hunting for Abuji all along.
Q 26In When My Name Was Keoko, a postwar letter reveals Uncle was smuggled to which region, where Communists halted travel?
Manchuria
Manchuria is where he was taken after hiding in a neighbor's cellar, and with travel halted he is still unable to come home when the book ends.
Q 27In When My Name Was Keoko, Koreans who side with the occupiers are branded chin-il-pa, which means what?
Lover of Japan
Lover of Japan is the insult, and Sun-hee realizes it fits her friend Jung-shin's family when the girl's older sister is spared from being sent to work in Japan.
Q 28Which game does Sun-hee use to mend her friendship with Jung-shin in When My Name Was Keoko?
Cat's cradle
Cat's cradle, shared along with a treat of popcorn, wins Jung-shin back after she has avoided Sun-hee out of shame at her father's collaboration.
Q 29Uncle is beaten in When My Name Was Keoko for altering news of which Korean Olympic marathon champion of 1936?
Sohn Kee-chung
Sohn Kee-chung won in Berlin but was entered under the Japanese name Kitei Son because Korea was occupied, a slight Uncle tries to correct at the cost of a beating.
Q 30With Abuji's consent, Tae-yul leaves school in When My Name Was Keoko to help Japanese soldiers build what?
An airstrip
An airstrip gives the plane-mad Tae-yul his first work near aircraft, and two months later he joins the Japanese Youth Air Corps.