The Island of Sea Women(66)
“But that’s not what happened,” I repeated. “How can they change what I saw with my own eyes into something so different?”
He didn’t have an answer. I watched the muscles in his jaw move as he read the final words: “All political rallies, marches, and demonstrations are now banned. Crackdowns will occur for any street gatherings, and the posting or handing out of leaflets is forthwith illegal.” He folded the newspaper and laid it on the floor. “From now on, we must be very careful.”
I’d watched my mother die in the sea. I’d seen Yu-ri go into the sea one person and come out another. I understood the sea to be dangerous, but what was happening on dry land confused and scared me. In the last few months, I’d witnessed several people get shot in front of me. I’d seen people on both sides beaten. Those who’d been killed or injured were all Korean—whether from the mainland or Jeju—and the perpetrators had all been our countrymen. This was unfathomable to me, and I couldn’t stop shaking from fear, not even when my husband held me tight and told me he would keep us safe.
The Ring of Fire
March–December 1948
The year following the March 1 demonstration was filled with family and work, and I didn’t once see Mi-ja. She had to be struggling with her situation, and I felt terrible about that. But as much as I loved and missed her, I needed to take precautions. She lived in Hamdeok, where the military was headquartered. Her husband was, I believed, on the wrong side, and he was unpredictable. I couldn’t risk that in a moment of rage or suspicion he might turn against Jun-bu or me. Of course, there were times I questioned why Mi-ja didn’t seek me out and what that might mean. I wondered too if she thought about me or if she was as occupied with work and family as I was.
My children were doing well. Min-lee and Sung-soo would soon have birthdays. They’d turn three and two. Jun-bu and I had been blessed with a second son, Kyung-soo. He was a docile baby, and it pleased me that Min-lee was already learning to take care of her brothers. My husband was respected by his students, and I was well established as a small-diver in the Bukchon collective. Despite our good fortune, we had our disagreements. Jun-bu remained clear that he wanted all our children to be educated, and at least once a week we had nearly the same conversation.
“Let me remind you of the old saying,” he said one afternoon after he’d had to punish a boy in his class for cheating. “If you plant red beans, then you will harvest red beans.” My mother had often recited this aphorism, and it explained that it was up to the parents to plant, grow, and nourish their children, so they became good and useful adults. Then he added, “You should want Min-lee to have the same opportunities as our sons.”
“I understand your wishes,” I responded. “But I continue to hope that if I have another baby, it will be a girl, who will help her older sister pay for her brothers’ learning. After all, it took three women—your mother, your sister, and me—to put you through school. When Sung-soo is ready to go to college, Min-lee will be nineteen and earning money by doing leaving-home water-work. But by the time Kyung-soo goes to college, Min-lee will surely be married. I’ll need at least one other haenyeo in the household to help pay for the boys’ school fees.”
Jun-bu just smiled and shook his head.
To me, all this showed that, as much as I loved and respected him, he was still only a man and didn’t have the larger worries I had. When he was at home or at school, I was in the world. I had to be practical and think ahead, because everything was unstable around us. Here we were a year after the demonstration and acts of retaliation continued. If village elders filed complaints that members of the Northwest Young Men’s Association had demanded money or bags of millet as bribes, they would not be seen again. If a group of leftists came down Mount Halla and shot a policeman, squads of policemen combed the mountain in search of the perpetrators. If the culprits couldn’t be found, the police shot innocent villagers as a lesson.
The U.S. military government decided to make some changes. Our first Korean governor was replaced by Governor Yoo, who was reported to wear sunglasses twenty-four hours a day and sleep with a gun. Even the U.S. authorities labeled him an extreme rightist. He purged all Jeju-born officials and replaced them with men who’d escaped from the north and were as anti-communist as he was. He swapped many Jeju-born police and police captains with men from the mainland, who’d never liked or had sympathy for the people of our island. He banned all People’s Committees and called those like my family and me, who’d benefited from them, extreme leftists. I was not an extreme leftist. I wasn’t even a leftist. No matter. There would no longer be classes for women or any of the other activities that the village chapters had organized.
We had only one newspaper on the island, but by the time a copy reached Bukchon the news might have been old, or it could have been wrong in the first place. Jun-bu also listened to the news on his radio, but one night he said rather glumly, “I think the station is controlled by the rightists, who, in turn, are controlled by the Americans. We have the gossip and rumors that pass from village to village, but can we trust anything we hear?”
I didn’t have an answer.
The Americans announced that on May 10 those of us living south of the Thirty-eighth Parallel would finally have our own elections. My husband’s spirits momentarily lifted.