Customer Reviews

To Swim Across the World

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It is an amazing story of faith and survival. It is also a love story - a nontraditional one because ardent patriotism is intrinsic to the love between the man and woman whose lives are recounted in "To Swim Across The World."

The son of an impoverished woodcarver, Sei-Young Shin lives in Nabi, a mountain village in Southern Korea. Sei-Young's father finds relief from the terrors of the Japanese occupation in rice wine; his mother wears a mask of impassive resignation.

The boy is nurtured by his adored grandfather, a Christian minister, who, when dismissing the youngster's Japanese dictated name, says, "Your name is Sei-Young, which means 'to swim across the world.' Someday you will do just that."

Hoping for a better tomorrow does not assuage the boy's present travail. "Hunger was just a way of life, "Sei-Young observes, "like waking up and hoping for a bowl of rice soup and soy sauce, perhaps with ferns, for the morning meal."

During World War II a lack of food was less painful than seeing his grandfather hung by the heels then clubbed by Japanese soldiers as the old man is told to bow to Shinto, not God. Sei-Young suffers in silence as their hut is ransacked, the clothes ripped from his mother's body. He weeps openly when his younger brother falls ill and dies.

Following the war Sei-Young becomes a student at The Christian Boys' Academy in Seoul. In 1948, after Syngman Rhee's election as Korea's first President, Sei-Young is amazed to be appointed assistant to the leader. But all too soon Seoul's streets erupt at the outbreak of the Korean War.

Just as Sei-Young is coming of age in the South, Heisook Pang is growing up in North Korea. The daughter of an influential clergyman, life is much easier for Heisook; in fact, so abundant that she asks her mother why they are called "the privileged Pangs." It is her father who tells her the truth - he gives the Japanese money from his church.

Confused and disheartened by this revelation, Heisook finds no solace from her mother, a woman of "veiled emotions" who suffers seasonal illnesses. The girl's beliefs are challenged by a beloved older brother who detests the Japanese and denies the existence of heaven.

Rev. Pang's payment to the Japanese does not protect his family from the effects of war. Heisook is forced to abandon her education, instead spending school hours repairing garments for Japanese soldiers. When her brother is called to duty in the Imperial Army, certain death for Koreans, he flees.

Following the establishment of the 38th Parallel, Rev. Pang finds sanctuary at the Seoul Presbyterian Church. Mrs. Pang, clinging to the belief that some day her son will return, refuses to leave home but sends Heisook to join her father. What follows is a young woman's harrowing escape across a treacherous border to a strange city.

However, it is in Seoul that Heisook and Sei-Young will meet, fall in love, and marry.

Based on the true story of their mother and father, the author's have woven a remarkable testimony to the power of courage and love. If, from time to time, Frances and Ginger Park have idealized their parents, they are to be forgiven. "To Swim Across The World" is a moving, almost miraculous journey, an inspiration to all.

- Gail Cooke

'To Swim Across the World' is the story of two young Koreans during a difficult time, the late 1940's and early 1950's. We meet Sei-Young, a poor boy who decides to try to lift his family out of poverty by performing demanding work for a Japanese farmer. Sei-Young's father drinks away the family's money while the mother takes care of Kwan-Young, Sei-Young's little brother. Life is quite different for Heisook, a young girl with an unusual family: Her father, although a Christian minister, is somewhat prosperous due to the fact that church offering money buys his family protection from the ruling Japanese authorities. Heisook's brother is a rebellious, wheels-off teenager, and her mother seems to have more love for the children in the local orphanage than for her own. Heisook believes that she has faith in God until Communist forces in North Korea change their lives forever.

'To Swim Across the World' offers alternating chapters from both Sei-Young and Heisook from childhood until adulthood. The book is a fictionalized biography of the Park sisters' parents. I enjoyed the book very much. Like other reviewers, I found the book to be a page-turner. Reading about another culture in a time of distress during our current time of distress was encouraging and soothing. This is a story about having faith, losing it, and finding it again. The book can be read by adults and young adults alike. I think the book could be very valuable especially now for young readers who can discover how other people in other places handle adversity and seemingly overwhelming odds. A good book for our times and for our faith.

One reviewer from Korea blasted this book, accusing it of being historically inaccurate. I don't know much about Korean history, but I do know that when I want to learn about it, I'll go to a history book, not a novel. Good novels are about people and the things they think and feel. It doesn't have to be historically accurate. (That's why it's called 'fiction!') If you want to learn about history, pick up a history book. If you want an enjoyable, touching story, pick up 'To Swim Across the World.'

Long ignored in the history of our collective consciousness as a society and specific culture are the important contributions made by the richness and diversity of those who courageously left other places, for whatever reason...to embark on a journey to our shores. We have done an abysmal job of welcoming them in the truest sense of the spirit of welcome. We have asked them to forget their rich backgrounds to the degree, as the Parks so movingly report, that they deny it themselves. We require them to commit almost a form of spiritual genocide merely to be a part of what is this culture. This moving story should be required reading and we should be unable to successfully complete a high school education in the absence of a clear sense of honor and deep respect for the experiences that people such as the Parks bring to us. I am grateful for their courage, dignity...and extend my sincerest welcome.

In 1941, Japan invades the Korean Peninsula. In the north, Heisook Pang barely feels the impact of the foreigners and most of that through tales of horror far to the south. Heisook, her brother, their parents, and occasionally a visiting cousin still split their time between Sinuiju and Heavenly Mountain. At the same time in the south, the Japanese are everywhere and even those living in rural sections such as Sei-Young Shin daily feel the domination of the conquered.

When World War II ends, the Cold War immediately moves into the Peninsular. A man-made barrier of hatred suddenly splits families and relatives are no longer able to visit one another across the line. Heisook finds the Communist North quite oppressive especially after her father is taken away. In 1947, she flees to the south knowing she has little to live for anymore in North Korea. At the same time, Sei-Young Shin finds Seoul a thriving place to flourish, soon becoming an accomplished orator for freedom. By 1950, the Communists cross the 38th Parallel and Sei-Young and Heisook have met, fallen in love, and married.

TO SWIM ACROSS THE WORLD is an intriguing tale that uses a historical fictionalized account of the parents of the authors as a backdrop to a turbulent decade in Korea. The story line is fantastic as the alternating paragraphs describe what is happening to Sei-Young and Heisook while outside events shape their lives. Genre fans have a winner worth reading and hopefully the Park siblings will continue the family saga with what happened during the following decades.

Harriet Klausner

It's a well known phenomenon that so many authors' first novels are semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tales. After all, you write what you know and we wouldn't expect young writers to know much. Still, despite their lack of experience as writers and their rather limited experience of life, these debut efforts are often the best books that the authors will ever produce, sometimes--as in the case of Harper Lee's classic To Kill a Mockingbird--the only book they'll ever write. Then again, there are some cases where the author just needs to get the story out of his system before he can get on with the rest of his career. But this is the only case I can think of offhand where an author returned to autobiographical material for a second novel and managed to improve quite so drastically on the first.

Cleopatra Moon tells the story of two Korean-American sisters growing up in the suburbs of Washington, DC in the 1970s and of their current lives and the strained relationship between them. Marcy, who now runs a second hand store on an Indian reservation in Nevada, was a bookish,, dutiful daughter. Her sister, Cleopatra, who owns a business making gourmet food sauces, was strikingly beautiful, self-possessed, and daring when they were young. Cleopatra was the kind of girl we all went to high school with, who could use her good looks to get just about anything she wanted, and was surrounded by fawning acolytes who did her bidding. We all hated such women, but Marcy lived in utter awe of her sister, of her looks, and of her ability to manipulate people. This creates a real problem in the book as we neither like Cleopatra, who is the mystery at the book's core, nor can we respect Marcy who is so much in her thrall.

Added to this structural problem are the Oprahesque touches in the book. There is the obligatory sexual assault, and Marcy's advocacy for the White Sky tribe and her belief in spiritual forces add a treacly New Age/politically correct edge. Some of the stuff about teen girls dealing with anti-Asian racism is mildly interesting, particularly because there's so little other fiction dealing with the topic, but the focus of the novel is elsewhere, mainly on the not very compelling tensions between the sisters. Ultimately, we just don't like the sisters enough to get particularly involved in their story.

Meanwhile, in To Swim Across the World, Frances Park and her real life sister, Ginger--the two own a boutique together in Washington--have written a marvelous novel based on the lives and love of their Korean immigrant parents. The novel is set against a backdrop of first the Japanese occupation and then the Communist takeover of the North and the ensuing War. Sei-Young Shin is a young man from South Korea, his father a woodcarver and a drunkard, beaten down by life under the Japanese. The great influence in Sei-Young's life is his Grandfather, a churchless minister who surreptitiously paints the message "Freedom in our land" on local rocks, and continually reminds him :

Your name is Sei-Young, which means 'to swim across the world.' Someday you will do just that.

Heisook Pang is the daughter of a prominent minister in the North. Her brother is rebellious and questions how their parents can so docilely accept their oppressors, but her father is devoted to the Church. Chapters alternate between the home lives of Heisook and Sei-Young, who eventually meet and fall in love, but only after both families have been beset with much sorrow and Heisook has undertaken a harrowing escape from the North.

The book is a revelation. It evokes the awesome struggle of an entire (albeit divided) nation and its people to live in freedom. From their days in grade school, when they are required to answer to Japanese names and are taught nothing of their own country's history, to their meeting in college, where Communist students are trying to close the Christian university, we see Heisook and Sei-Young deal with the tragedies of life under the two monstrous "-isms" (Fascism and Communism) of the 20th Century. Any American who thinks that immigrants are just looking for a hand out should read about what this couple goes through and we should all thank Providence that such people chose, and still choose, to make their new lives here.

Where Cleopatra Moon is a chick book that will only appeal to the Oprah Book Clubbers, To Swim Across the World is a terrific novel, wherein the universal quest for freedom is realized in thrilling and moving fashion. If the Park sisters decide to follow this one up and write a book about how Heisook and Sei-Young adjusted to life in their new country, I for one will be eager to read it.

GRADE : Cleopatra Moon : C-

GRADE : To Swim Across the World : A

We all seem to question our place on this earth from time to time. It's during those moments of self-reflection that I like to draw inspiration from others. Ironically, the latest insights into my own purely American life came from a novel based on a completely different time and culture.

A friend recently turned me on to "To Swim Across the World." My tastes generally lend themselves to historical or political non-fiction. Knowing this, she suggested that I read To Swim as it would meet those criteria and offer "even more." She described it as the most thought-provoking read yet among her book club friends.

I bought the book prior to an extended business trip thinking I'd appease my friend and have a novel I could turn to from time to time over the next couple of days. I accomplished only the former as I started the book on my flight and ended it that evening in my hotel room. I couldn't put it down.

She was right. It was the "even more" that I found most fascinating. Superbly written, the book chronicles the lives in Korea of a young man (Sei-Young) and a young woman (Heisook) during and preceding the Korean War. But it was the characters' efforts to better their surroundings in the face of tremendous adversity that really struck me.

Certainly, my hurdles in life don't compare to a young woman crossing the 38th Parallel to flee the dangers of a Communist North Korea or of a young man supporting his family as a youth to eventually become an advisor to the first president-elect of the Republic of Korea. But the basis of their stories should be familiar to everyone on some level. We all face obstacles in life and we all have roots in other cultures.

Authors Frances Park and Ginger Park share theirs in a way that successfully brings the reader back to 1940's and 1950's Korea and genuinely makes you care for Sei-Young, Heisook and their families. This was a time I knew little about. The book's characters walk you through what I'm sure you'll agree is a very compelling history lesson.

"To Swim Across the World" is the classic American dream tale updated to reflect a new generation of Americans-a generation in which we all have roots in other cultures.

I picked up an "Advanced Reading Copy" of this book at The Goodwill for 69 cents with the intention of tossing it if it wasn't any good. I was glued to it from beginning to end. I have never been a big fan of anything Asian so I was surprised to find that I was so engrossed with the characters in this book. It was written in a clear and concise voice and provided me with a new perspective on the Korean and Japanese cultures. I would love to know what happens after the book ends. Is there a sequel in the works? I hope so! This book is a love story, a historical novel and a tragedy all rolled into one. Buy this book, you'll love it.

To Swim Across the World is a book which will offer insights and rewards to a variety of readers in a variety of contexts. The story itself presents a concise review of the upheavals experienced by the Korean peoples during the midpoint of the 20th century. It presents some serious lessons in history as a backdrop to the lives of two quite different Korean families. The journey of self-discovery taken by its authors Frances and Ginger Park will unquestionably enkindle similar quests on the part of Korean-American readers who will wish to learn more of their own family and its reaction to these times.

The book presents a story in which personal losses through the blind processes of war and occupation are countered through a deepened understanding of the possibilities of redemption. One of the most touching episodes in the book gently and realistically depicts the healing of the emotional scar tissue of a Korean woman by the quiet courage of a Japanese farmer who extends support and then physical protection to a hunted Korean family. The book is wonderful in its shaded nuances where people are drawn in a variety of hues rather than simply pure good or pure evil.

The writing draws the reader into the story and invokes the terror of the flight from North Korea which marks a pivotal point in the story.

I found in this novel glimmers of a personal history which could connect to Frances Park's earlier book When My Sister was Cleopatra Moon. This book takes place in America and addresses the lives of two complex Korean American sisters. It is a masterful exploration of the complexity of sibling relationships and provides a poetic journey towards a reconciliation with the images and conflicting memories of a deceased father which will reward the serious reader. Its insights into the Korean world and its affects upon the "second generation" will be appreciated by all who enjoyed To Swim Across the World.

This book takes you to another time and place--a time and place that some may find uncomfortable at first, but which you become a part of as the story progresses. Eventually, you no longer feel like an outsider looking into a snowglobe world, but a silent onlooker who's part of the scenery of Korea.

An unusual setting for a classic love story--and an uplifting, life-affirming tale.

To Swim Across The World is the fictional tale told by Frances Park and Ginger Park -- the real-life daughters of a star-crossed Korean couple who fell in love in the wake of the Korean War. A woman from the North and a man from the South found each other even as their nation was torn in two. Written in a lilting, lyrical style, To Swim Across The World is a story of personal heartache and courage, amidst the stark reality of a nation divided. Highly recommended.