In one surname,the turmoil of two nations

I tell my children to tell people that its a Japanese name and be proud of it, Mangjul,67,said.

How Mangjul ended up with his unusual name is a story of how he made peace with both Japan,his fathers country,and South Korea,his mothers.

In South Korea,just 20 surnamesincluding Kim,Lee and Parkaccount for 65 per cent of the population. Mangjul Ilrang sounds neither Korean to Koreans nor Japanese to Japanese. It is written in the Chinese characters sometimes used for names in both countries. They are pronounced Ichiro Amigiri in Japanese,but Mangjul Ilrang in Korean,which is how he says it.

Mangjul was born in 1942,when Korea was a Japanese colony. His mother was a Korean divorcée. His father,Yoshiuemon Amigiri,a Japanese police officer stationed at Gimhae on the southern Korean coast,named his only child Ichiro,or first-born son.

Japans 35-year colonial ruleand the familys life togethercame to an abrupt end in 1945 with Japans defeat in World War II. Amigiri was detained by a nationalist Korean militia and deported.

One day,when I returned home,father was gone, Mangjul said.

His maternal grandfather registered him as his own son. The boy assumed his grandfathers family name and grew up as Yang Ilrang. His Korean classmates bullied him for not speaking Korean well.

In 1965,when South Korea and Japan re-established diplomatic ties,he sent a letter to the Japanese broadcaster NHK,which helped locate the father living in retirement at an island in southern Japan. The father and son began exchanging letters,but the son could not travel to see his father,ailing with cancer. At the time,a South Korean man could not travel abroad until he had completed his military service. The son hurried to join the army. He also filed a lawsuit to regain his original name.

Although the South Korean court and military acknowledged that Mangjuls father was Japanese,resentment against the colonial era was still so deep that they could not accept the name Ichiro Amigiri for a South Korean citizen. In the end,Mangjul settled for half of what he had wanted: his original name was legally restored to him but only in Chinese characters and on condition that he pronounce those characters the Korean way.

After he left the military in 1970,Mangjul,and his son sailed to Japan. His father had died the year before but the Amigiri clan welcomed him warmly.

Except for a brief attempt to emigrate to Japan that ended in what he described as a bitter dispute with a Japanese cousin and his fathers adopted children over the family estate,Mangjul has lived as a model South Korean citizen.

But living with that name has not always been easy. His wife,Chung Soon-nam,says her family disapproved of their marriage,partly because of his Japanese name.

I tell my children: Your name is so unique that if you commit a crime,it will be easy for police to catch you. But when you do something good,everyone will remember you, Mangjul said.

Although one of his granddaughters was recently taunted by her schoolmates for having a Japanese name,most of his children and grandchildren say they no longer hesitate to reveal the origin of the name,a reflection of the gradually improving ties between the countries

I hope both nations will reconcile,just as I have made peace with my life in South Korea and my cousin in Japan, he said. We learn from history to avoid repeating past mistakes,not to reopen old wounds.

Over the past nine years,he has been running an annual exchange programme for farmers from South Korea and Japan. His family visits his fathers tomb in Japan once every three years.

As a man with roots in two countries that call each other close yet distant neighbours, Mangjul has faced many difficult choices,including one last one:

As I get old,I wonder: Should I be buried beside my father in Japan or here in Korea near my children?