Park, Therese 1941–

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Park, Therese 1941–

PERSONAL: Born February 15, 1941, in Taegu, Korea; immigrated to the United States, 1966; naturalized U.S. citizen; daughter of Chung Ho Suh (an export/import business owner) and Jee Ja Chung; married Bong Soon Park (a civil engineer), July 22, 1967 (divorced, 1987); married Bruce Hansen (a computer analyst), October 12, 1990; children: Susanne, Irene, Christine. Ethnicity: "Asian (Korean)." Education: Seoul National University School of Music, B.A., 1964; École Nor-male de Musique de Paris, France, M.A., 1966; studied creative writing at University of Missouri. Religion: Roman Catholic.

ADDRESSES: Home—10500 Lee Blvd., Leawood, KS, 66206. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Kansas City Philharmonic Orchestra (now Kansas City Symphony Orchestra), Kansas City, MO, cellist, 1966–96. Instructor in cello at Nazarene College (now Mid-American Nazarene University) and Grace-land College (now University), Independence campus, between 1982 and 1984; private cello teacher.

MEMBER: Korean Institute for Human Rights (Kansas City chapter), Toastmasters Club.

WRITINGS:

A Gift for the Emperor (novel), Spinsters' Ink (Duluth, MM), 1997.

When a Rooster Crows at Night: A Child's Experience of the Korean War, iUniverse (Lincoln, NE), 2004.

Contributor of articles to publications such as Maryknoll, Our Family in Canada, Best Times in Johnson County, Kansas, Sun, Korea Bridge, and Kansas City Star.

SIDELIGHTS: Therese Park immigrated to the United States from Korea in 1966 after auditioning for the Kansas City Philharmonic Orchestra. She was moved to write her novel, A Gift for the Emperor, after watching a documentary film about Asian women forced into sexual servitude by the Japanese government during World War II. "It is about time for Westerners to know the truth about Hirohito's Reunification Policy of Asia," Park once told CA.

The novel details the life of Soon-ah, a seventeen-year-old Korean schoolgirl, whose life is torn apart by the abuses her family suffers at the hands of the Japanese. In the course of the novel, "a horrible story beautifully told," according to Eleanor J. Bader in Sojourner, Soon-ah's family experiences grave brutality. Her father, a Presbyterian minister, is murdered by Japanese police, her mother is raped, and her brother is conscripted into the Japanese army. Soon-ah is abducted after being deceived by the Japanese, who promise her wartime service as a nurse. Instead, as one of "the Emperor's special gifts to the soldiers," she is sent to a military "comfort house" in the South Pacific, where she is forced to work in a brothel. Sadamu, a Japanese war correspondent who has become horrified by the war crimes committed by his countrymen, falls for Soon-ah, orchestrates her placement to a brothel for officers and eventually escapes with her to a tropical island. "I suppose we are meant to see Sadamu as a romantic figure … but his character unsettled me," noted reviewer Chris Leidig in the American Reporter. "He professes to care about Soon-ah and yet he does not help [her] to escape her life as a prostitute." However, "Soon-ah comes to the realization that even the tender Sadamu has control over her life," Leidig observed.

Booklist contributor Mary Carroll described the novel as "a vivid re-creation of a devastating tragedy." Leidig noted the "wonderful sense of place" and characters of "dimension and subtlety." a Kirkus Reviews contributor, however, wrote about "characters that seem more like one-dimensional witnesses than vibrantly complex fictional creations," but also noted that "war crimes against women are memorably described here." Leidig found that Park "controls the story with a magnificent restraint that never allows the story to wander from its tight focus."

Park decided against a nonfiction approach to depicting the ordeals of the comfort women. "As a woman I wanted to express how they felt," Park told Jeannette Batz for an article in the Riverfront Times. "It's not the same physical thing we went through, but the comfort women symbolize a nation called Korea, and we are all connected." Speaking about her primary motivation for writing A Gift for the Emperor, Park told CA: "Writing deals with one's inner voice. After spending thirty years as a cellist with the Kansas City Symphony, I decided to let my inner voice resound…. As a woman born in the strictly male-dominated society of Korea, I learned that, if a woman wants to be heard or seen, she must be as strong as a bull and as wise as a snake."