The Island of Sea Women(64)

The grandmother-diver gave our chief a steely gaze. “This is difficult. Tradition says that Korean men won’t rape a married woman, but what if that’s wrong? What if—”

A deep silence fell over us as we considered what could happen to us or the unmarried girls in our families.

That evening when Jun-bu came home, I told him about the gossip from the bulteok. He didn’t try to dismiss any of it. Instead, he said, “I’ve heard some of this too.”

I didn’t question why he hadn’t told me earlier. Maybe he didn’t want me to worry. The truth is, I wasn’t nervous or scared that someone would attack me. I felt sure I could take care of myself. But what about Yu-ri?

“Your sister might not be right in her brain, and in ordinary times she might easily be ignored as an old miss past her prime, but we can’t take any chances.” As I stared at him, I realized he needed me to decide what to do. “We will no longer let her roam the village by herself. She will have to stay within our gate or be with Granny Cho at all times.”

Of course, Yu-ri didn’t like this one bit. She still had the spirit of a haenyeo, and she chafed at being tied to her tether. But that was just too bad.

Meanwhile, we heard that, high on Mount Halla, four thousand self-defense groups had hidden themselves in old Japanese fortifications. It was rumored that they’d found caches of weapons left by the Japanese and undiscovered by the Americans when they’d first arrived to dump abandoned munitions in the sea.

When I told Jun-bu what had been repeated in the bulteok, he remarked darkly, “Once more, it is islanders against outsiders.”

Then, in response to the strike, the police arrested two hundred people in Jeju City in two days. After that, they arrested another three hundred officials, businessmen, Jeju-born policemen, and teachers, including one from the school where Jun-bu taught. Frightened, lots of people went back to work, but not Jun-bu and me. We believed in the power of the strike. That changed, however, when Jun-bu’s colleague came to the house after being released from detention. The two men drank cups of rice wine and spoke in low voices, while I listened.

“They kept thirty-five of us in a cell just three by four meters,” Jun-bu’s friend recounted. “Policemen from the mainland pulled us out one by one. We heard screaming and begging. A few hours later, they’d drag that person back to the cell—unconscious or unable to walk. Then they’d select someone else. When my turn came, they beat me, and I wailed like all the rest. They wanted me to name the organizers of the strike.”

“And did you?”

“How should I know who they are? The policemen beat me some more, but what happened to me was not as bad as what went on elsewhere. They had women too. The way they screamed . . . I will never forget it.”

“What will you do now?”

“I’m going back to Japan. My family and I will be safer there.”

To hear a Jeju person say he would rather live among the cloven-footed ones than on our birth island? It was beyond shocking. The next day, Jun-bu—without speaking to me about his decision—returned to his classroom. His timing was good, because the following morning the teachers who were still on strike were replaced by men who’d defected from North Korea. I begged Jun-bu to be careful. As someone who’d been educated abroad and been exposed to different ideas about equality, land reform, and education for all, he would automatically be suspect.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “They’re just afraid of communism. They see it everywhere.”

But how could I not be worried when a sea change was happening all around us, as though a tsunami was washing over our island and sucking all we knew and cherished back out to the ocean? More people were rounded up. Trials were held by U.S. Army officers, which meant that communication between the Koreans accused and the American judges was limited. People went to prison. Clashes between villagers and the police became more frequent and increasingly heated. More posters and leaflets were hung or handed out, and more people were rounded up, while far, far away from us, the United States and the Soviet Union continued to dispute the fate of our homeland. Their squabble felt like it had nothing to do with us, but here on Jeju, the police went on what they called emergency alert.

I couldn’t stop thinking about my mother’s last moments and the way the bitchang had tightened around her wrist underwater. She had fought to free herself, I’d tried to help, but the outcome had been inescapable. I felt as though a version of that was happening to us now, only on dry land, and yet we just wanted to live our lives. Jun-bu drilled his students on their lessons. Granny Cho took Yu-ri and the children on short walks to the sea when the days seemed long and quiet. I went diving with the collective and began training a baby-diver. I was so busy—and I guess Mi-ja was too—that the three kilometers between Hamdeok and Bukchon now seemed a great distance. After the march, I didn’t see her again for five months.

And still events closed in around us.



* * *



It was August 13. Sweet potato harvest season. Yu-ri, my children, and I went early to our fields. I was eight months pregnant. My stomach was large now with my growing baby, and my back ached from being bent over. Sung-soo had just begun to walk and his sister wasn’t yet old enough to keep him out of trouble, so I had to keep an eye on the three of them as I did my work. By 10:00, it was raining so hard I decided we should go home and wait until the weather settled. I tied Sung-soo to Yu-ri’s back, took Min-lee’s hand, and we headed to the village. My clothes stuck wet and prickly against my skin, and my feet and legs were muddy. Along the way, we ran into my neighbor Jang Ki-yeong; her daughter, Yun-su; and their other female relatives as they walked back to Bukchon from their field.