The Island of Sea Women

by Lisa See

  “It started as a school project,” her mother explains.

  “I’ve set this to the most important part,” Clara says. “Are you ready?”

  Yes, finally, Young-sook is ready. She takes the earbuds, puts them in her ears, and nods. Clara pushes a button, and there comes Mi-ja’s old-woman voice.

  “Young-sook always said I should divorce my husband, just as she always told the women in her collective who had similar experiences to mine. She was always so understanding of them when they couldn’t leave their husbands, but she could not think the same way when it came to me.”

  “That was selfish of her,” Clara says on the recording.

  “Not selfish. I loved her, and she loved me, but she never fully understood who or what I was.” Mi-ja gives a knowing snort. “And neither did I. It took me many years to see that I was different from those other women. I mean, of course, I was afraid of Sang-mun, as they were afraid of their husbands. I was in constant terror of what he might do to me. What made me different from the other haenyeo, whose husbands could be violent, was that I deserved Sang-mun and the punishment he gave me.”

  “Granny, no one deserves what he did to you.”

  “I did. My husband was married to a bad person.”

  On the recording, Clara tries to tell her great-grandmother that she isn’t a bad person, and this gives Young-sook time to remember when she too had tried to argue this point with Mi-ja. Why hadn’t she heard what Mi-ja was truly saying? Why hadn’t she asked more questions? Even more painful is that this conversation had happened back when her heart had still been open to Mi-ja, or so she thought.

  “I was a bad person,” Mi-ja now insists in Young-sook’s ears. “I killed my mother when I entered the world. I was the daughter of a collaborator. I let Sang-mun ruin me. But my greatest disgrace came when I didn’t stop what happened in Bukchon. From my birth to that moment, I lived a life of shame.”

  In the recording, Young-sook hears Mi-ja weeping and Clara comforting her. Again, Young-sook is racked by memories, only they are of her own shortcomings. There’s a click, then another click, and the voices come back. Mi-ja is once again composed.

  “To be ruined,” Mi-ja said. “You know what that means.”

  “Granny, you’ve told me many times. You forget sometimes—”

  “Forget? No! I will never forget. Young-sook and I were so happy. We’d just returned to Jeju from leaving-home water-work. Everything was so different on the dock. Scary. Sang-mun offered to help us. He looked man-beautiful, but he was evil. I don’t know why Young-sook didn’t see that right away, but she didn’t. I hated him from the first moment I saw him, and he must have seen in me the weakness of my bloodline. I was a person who would give in. He knew he could take advantage of that, and I let him. He easily separated us. Once she was out of sight, he took me to his office. When he started touching me, I froze. I let him pull down my pants—”

  “You didn’t let him, Granny. He raped you.”

  “I thought, If I don’t move or scream, then soon it would end.”

  Mi-ja starts to cry again. This is all going back so much further than the events in Bukchon. Even when her own grandmother had hinted at what had happened to Mi-ja, Young-sook had refused to believe it, let alone ask more questions. She’d been too wrapped up in her own misery that Sang-mun had not come to Hado for her.

  “I couldn’t tell Young-sook what happened,” Mi-ja says. “She would have been disgusted with me. Never would she have looked at me the same way.”

  “Then she couldn’t have been a very good friend—”

  Mi-ja’s voice comes back, surprisingly sharp. “Don’t ever say that. She was a wonderful friend and a great diver. She became the best haenyeo in Hado. She learned early on from Yu-ri’s accident and the loss of her mother how to protect those who looked to her for security and safety. Not one person died in her collective when she was chief.”

  That Mi-ja would have known this about Young-sook should perhaps be more surprising. Or not. Young-sook had made it her business to know all about Mi-ja. Maybe Mi-ja had done the same with Young-sook. In the silence that follows Mi-ja’s outburst, Young-sook imagines how Clara must have felt in that moment—chastened, maybe even afraid or embarrassed—but for the first time she understands that, for all the anger and blame she’s held within her these past years, she herself failed Mi-ja in many ways.

  “Young-sook was my only friend,” Mi-ja insists. “That’s why it all hurt so much.” Another long pause, then she continues. “You see, she liked Sang-mun. I thought she’d think I was trying to steal him from her.”

  “Steal him?”

  “There was always a part of Young-sook that was jealous of me. That I could read and write a tiny bit. That I got to work in the bulteok before she was allowed to enter it. That I was prettier. You look at me now and see an old face, but once I was beautiful.”

  The shifting sea that has kept Young-sook unbalanced all day shifts again. She puts her fingers over the earbuds, pushing them farther into her head, trying to block the sound of the wind. Clara and Janet stare at her, watching her reaction.

  “So either she would have been disgusted with me or she would have thought I’d gone with Sang-mun to hurt her.”

  “Oh, Granny—”

  “And later? If I’d told her after the killings, she wouldn’t have believed me. She would have only heard made-up excuses.”

  The pause on the tape allows Young-sook to sort through this information. She purses her lips in acceptance of these truths about her own failings.

  “I made a choice,” Mi-ja continues. “I sought out Young-sook’s grandmother and told her what happened. That old woman was fierce. I begged her not to tell anyone, but she went straight to my aunt and uncle. ‘What if the girl is pregnant?’ she asked them. Auntie and Uncle took the bus to Jeju City and confronted Sang-mun’s parents. They said if their son didn’t marry me, they would report him to the police.”

  Young-sook tries to take this all in, seeking to understand things that happened more than sixty years ago. That Mi-ja’s aunt and uncle would have let her go into that marriage was one thing, but for Grandmother to arrange it? And then not tell her? With a chill, Young-sook remembers meeting Mi-ja in the olle after her engagement meeting. I told your grandmother everything. I begged her . . . And later, Young-sook’s grandmother’s triumphant demeanor when Mi-ja was driven away from Hado after her wedding. That girl has left Hado as she arrived—the daughter of a collaborator. Young-sook had loved her grandmother. She’d taught Young-sook about life and diving, but her hatred for the Japanese—whom she’d called the cloven-footed ones—and for those who collaborated with them had caused Mi-ja to be sent into a cruel and unforgivable situation. But it was Young-sook’s own blindness that had kept her from wanting to know the truth, and as a result she’d lost the sister of her heart. And later, Joon-lee and her family . . . But now . . . To understand everything is to forgive.

  “After that,” Mi-ja continues, “it was as I’ve told you before. Sang-mun was forced to marry me. He considered it his duty to share love with me every night. He needed and wanted a son, and his parents needed and wanted a grandchild. They even sent me back to Hado, so I might visit the goddess with Young-sook. I’d longed to have a family of my own, but now I didn’t want to do anything that would help plant a baby in me.”

  I’m not sure I want to have a baby. Mi-ja had said this directly to Young-sook on that first visit. If only Young-sook had questioned her more. But she didn’t. She’d been thinking solely of her own happiness.

  “I was in constant fear of him,” Mi-ja continues. “When he escaped from the north, he was even worse. Sharing love. Aigo! What a lie that is! I didn’t know what to do, and I had nowhere to go. Every time I was as frozen as I was the day he first ruined me. And so terrified. He didn’t stop with me either. The way he beat your grandfather . . . I did everything I could to protect Yo-chan and raise him to be a good man.”

  “
You should have told Young-sook,” Clara says on the recording. “If you had, and if she was truly your friend, then maybe everything would have turned out different.”

  When Young-sook thinks about how her friend suffered . . . For years . . . How pale Mi-ja had been when she and Sang-mun met Young-sook at the pickup point the first day the three of them met. The bruises she’d covered up over the years. The way she always froze when he came into view. How she made excuses for him. How she dressed for him. That Mi-ja herself had told Young-sook that Sang-mun made her pay for his loss of face before his superiors that day in Bukchon. And still later, how she’d gone back to Sang-mun to help Joon-lee . . .

  On the recording, Mi-ja lets out a tortured moan. “Different? I thought we were all going to die that day in Bukchon. I had no hope of survival, but if I had to die, I was grateful it would be with my friend. Then Sang-mun arrived with Yo-chan. I never had a mother to love me, and I missed that always. I couldn’t let Yo-chan grow up without me and live alone with his father.”

  With a chill, Young-sook remembers a visit from Mi-ja. She had talked about how some women chose suicide over living with their husbands. “But how can that be a path for a mother?” she had asked. “I have Yo-chan. I must live for him.”

  On the tape, Mi-ja adds another reason. “Then, when Young-sook asked me to take her children,” she says, “all I could think of was the brutality they’d be stepping into.”

  “I’m sorry, Granny, but I think it’s better to be alive and beaten than, well, dead.”

  “If you could know what it was like that day . . . The screams . . . The crying . . . The smell of fear . . . But you’re right,” Mi-ja admits. “In the end, everything that happened was my responsibility alone. I couldn’t take Young-sook’s children into his home. I couldn’t even take one. I couldn’t bear the thought of what Sang-mun might do to them when I knew what he had already done to Yo-chan and me. And then everything happened so fast.” Her voice falters. “Later, when Sang-mun found out what I’d done—not done—he was so angry with me. He worried that Jun-bu and the others would come back to haunt him. He said that by making him look like a weakling, I’d threatened his position with the government. Worst, I hadn’t stepped forward from the beginning and pleaded with the commander for Young-sook and her family. He looked at me and saw a collaborator, perpetrator, and traitor, but all I’d wanted to do was stay alive for my son.”

  Young-sook pulls out the earbuds. She looks from the girl, to her mother, and back to the letters. Her heart is cracking open. Maybe she won’t be able to bear it. A good woman is a good mother. She had tried to live by those words and had prided herself on all she’d done for her children. Now she sees that Mi-ja tried to do the same but with tragic results. She feels excruciating pain as decades of sorrow, anger, and regret she’s carried within her begin to shatter and melt.

  “My grandmother never stopped loving you,” Janet says. “She accepted what she did, and she wanted you to know everything. This we’ve brought to you.”

  For years, people have pestered Young-sook to tell her story. Always she’s said no. But now . . . The people asking carry within them the blood of Mi-ja and Young-sook. Yes, she’ll finally tell her story. She’ll tell them about the pain she endured but also about her closed heart that could not forgive.

  Clara drops to her knees. “Does this beach have any food?”

  This question is as old as the first haenyeo, and Clara must have learned it from her other great-grandma. Young-sook finds herself smiling. How can she not be transported back to the relationship she had with her closest friend, right on this beach, as they’d learned to swim, play, and love together?

  “More food than thirty refrigerators in my grandmother’s house,” she answers, adding, “if she’d had a refrigerator.”

  “Then will you take us into the sea?” Clara asks. “Will you teach us?”

  Young-sook doesn’t hesitate. “Have you brought something to swim in?”

  Clara grins up at her mother, who grins right back. Each of them shrugs a shoulder to reveal the brightly colored straps of their bathing suits.

  A breath,

  a breath,

  a breath . . .

  Acknowledgments

  I would not have been able to write The Island of Sea Women without the help of three extraordinary women: Dr. Anne Hilty, Brenda Paik Sunoo, and Jenie Hahn. I tracked down Anne Hilty, Jeju’s official ambassador of the haenyeo, through her numerous articles in The Jeju Weekly, National Geographic Traveller, and other magazines, as well as her book Jeju Haenyeo: Stewards of the Sea. Beyond her haenyeo expertise, she’s also written extensively about Jeju’s geography, shamans, goddesses, Kim Mandeok, food, the April 3 Incident, and death and burial rituals. We had a lively e-mail correspondence and Skype chats in which she answered every question I threw her way. She helped put together my travel itinerary to Jeju, arranged interviews, and introduced me to numerous people who proved to be extremely helpful: Governor Won Hee-ryung, who gave me a warm welcome to the island; Grand Shaman Kim Yoon-su, whom I visited at the Chilmeoridang shamanistic center; Shaman Suh Sun-sil, who shared her experiences with me in her own home; Song Jung-hee, the publisher of The Jeju Weekly; Kim Jeyon, Jeju government’s international relations coordinator; Professor Lee Byung-gul, director of the Jeju Sea Grant Center; Dr. Choa Hye-gyong, who early on headed a team to study the haenyeo for the Jeju Development Institute and shared with me her recordings and translations of haenyeo songs; Grace Kim, for her translation duties; Kim Hyeryen, who arranged for me to stay at her niece’s traditional house in Hado; and Marsha Bogolin, the manager of a guesthouse in the mid-mountain area.

  Dr. Hilty also sent me The Jeju 4.3 Incident Investigation Report, which outlines the conclusions of the National Committee for the Investigation of the Truth about the Jeju April 3 Incident. From this 755-page document, the result of one of the lengthiest human rights investigations in the world, I garnered details given by survivors and others on both sides of the conflict, as well as from declassified documents provided by the U.S. National Archives and various U.S. and Korean military branches. The report gave me first-person descriptions of the events at the March 1 demonstration, the shooting of the young woman in Bukchon, and how events played out in that village, including the account of an ambulance driver who overheard the plans of what would happen that day. It also provided me with the texts of posters, leaflets, radio broadcasts, speeches, and rallying cries.

  Brenda Paik Sunoo, the author of Moon Tides: Jeju Island Grannies of the Sea, is a bighearted woman. She arranged for me to stay in her building in the seaside village of Gwakji. She introduced me to Yang Soonja, a fashion designer who walked me through the persimmon-dyeing process; Cho Oksun, a retired haenyeo and neighbor; Kim Jong Ho, a poet, who shared his memories of being a boy during the April 3 Incident; and Kang Mikyoung, the daughter of a haenyeo and expert on domestic abuse on Jeju. Brenda and I also spent wonderful hours with Youngsook Han, a scholar, who translated for me during an especially moving interview with her haenyeo mother, Kang Hee-jeong, who spoke about the first time she saw electric lights, the Japanese occupation, how she became a haenyeo, and what it meant to send her daughter to college. (I’ll be thanking other haenyeo shortly, but let me say here that together their stories and memories helped me create the bantering conversations in the bulteok about the nature of men, the benefits of widowhood, and so much more.) Along the way, I had several lively discussions with many of these women about the influence of Heidi in their lives and on the island. Last, Brenda and I had a lot of fun with Yim Kwangsook, a nurse visiting from the United States, who translated during various interviews. I won’t forget our visit to the traditional Korean bathhouse any time soon.

  I met Jenie Hahn at Jeju National University. She translated the oral histories of several haenyeo, including those of Ko Chun-geum, Kim Chunman, Kwon Youngae, and Jeong Wolseon, in which they spoke of the day-to-day practicalities of recruitment, ferries, food, a
nd dormitory life for itinerant work in other countries. Jenie also sent me A Guide to Jeju Spoken in the Language of Jeju and English by Moon Soon-deok and Oh Seung-hun—which proved to be invaluable with its explanations of food, traditions, and aphorisms—and her translation of Kim Sooni’s “The Goddesses, the Myths and Jeju Island.” When I needed to confirm facts, Jenie graciously checked with Moon Soon-deok (Jeju Development Institute) and Kang Keonyong (a senior researcher at the Haenyeo Museum) for me.

  Allow me to gently shift my thanks to more general categories: the island, cultural traditions, haenyeo, and the April 3 Incident. Jeju is thirty times the size of Manhattan. This lush and beautiful island is home to 25 percent of the entire plant species of Korea. It’s the native home of what we commonly call the Christmas tree. The first foreigners believed to visit the island were Hendrick Hamel and his crew of Dutch sailors, who were shipwrecked on Jeju in 1653. They were imprisoned in Seoul, but a few of them, including Hamel, escaped thirteen years later. Once he returned to the Netherlands, he wrote a memoir chronicling his travails, thereby introducing Jeju Island to the West. Hundreds of years later, in 1901, Siegfried Genthe, a German climber, sought and received permission to be the first Westerner to scale Mount Halla. He also wrote of his adventures, and even today Mount Halla is used by many mountaineers as practice for climbing Mount Everest. Jumping to the 1970s, David J. Nemeth did his Peace Corps stint on Jeju. He kept a diary, which was eventually published as Jeju Island Rambling. The island also became the subject of his dissertation, The Architecture of Ideology: Neo-Confucianism Imprinting on Cheju Island, Korea, and later he wrote Rediscovering Hallasan: Jeju Island’s Traditional Landscapes of Sincerity, Mysticism and Adventure. For other general information about Jeju, I relied on Stories of Jeju, published by the Jeju Development Institute. The Kim Mandeok Memorial Hall gave me insights into the legacy of this early female philanthropist. The exhibits at Jeju Hangil Memorial Hall provided details about the island’s anti-Japanese movements. The Folk Village offered a good sense of the varieties of architecture and their purposes on Jeju, while the Jeju Stone Cultural Park was a great place to learn about the many uses of this natural resource.