The Island of Sea Women

The Shadow of a Nightmare

Immediately after the war, we had great hopes for independence, but the Japanese colonists had merely been replaced by American occupiers through the United States Army Military Government in Korea. Each morning and every evening, Jun-bu turned on his transistor radio. We heard Americans speaking in their language and others translating for them. They seemed to have come to the same conclusion that the Japanese had reached long ago: Jeju had a great strategic location. The island was now an American stepping-stone, only this time it led to the USSR, so instead of Japanese regiments, we had the Americans’ 749th Field Artillery, the Fifty-first Field Artillery, the Twentieth Regiment of the Sixth Division, and the Fifty-ninth Military Government Company. The commander of the government group, Major Thurman A. Stout, became Jeju Military Governor Stout. He ruled side by side with Park Gyeong-hun, who’d been appointed as the Korean governor. The People’s Committees opposed this, since neither man had been elected, but they were powerless to make a change. Governor Stout made lots of speeches, but the radio also had interviews with Captain Jones, Captain Partridge, Captain Martin, and captain, captain, captain. One day, Governor Stout announced, “In the interests of a peaceful and effective transfer, we’re asking officials from the former administration to return to their jobs. We also welcome all former policemen to work with us.”

“But every one of them is a former collaborator!” Jun-bu fumed. He wasn’t the only one to be upset. Most people took these moves to mean that the Americans were siding with the right-wingers and that the administration of the island—and small villages—would shift away from the People’s Committees to the police and constabulary. It was as if the Americans didn’t understand what they’d inherited.

But anger can be dangerous and have unintended consequences. The relationship between Governor Stout and the People’s Committees continued to sour. At the same time, recruitment posters for the Ninth Regiment of the Korean Constabulary were distributed to every village. Jun-bu read one of them to me: “The Korean Constabulary is neither a right-wing nor a left-wing organization. It is a patriotic military agency for youngbloods who love their comrades and are willing to die for their country. We are not the hunting dog of a certain country. We are not the puppet of a certain political party. We are simply the bulwark of the state, which tries to pursue Korea’s independence and defend our beloved homeland.” The constabulary’s actions, however, sent a clearer message. Its troops, many of whom had served in the Imperial Japanese Army, moved into the barracks at the former Japanese Navy Air Service air base in Moseulpo, which sent outrage around the island.

Through it all, people struggled to understand what the other side was saying. So much so that the U.S. military government opened an English academy. Men who’d been conscripted by the Japanese, had worked as collaborators, or had been educated abroad, were encouraged to sign up, which Jun-bu and Sang-mun did. As Jun-bu explained his decision to me, “How can I help change things if I sit by and do nothing?” I thought of my husband as being very smart, but he did not excel in learning this new language. Every night, he struggled with the lessons. Even the children and I picked up the basic sentences faster and better than he did, reciting the lines back and forth to each other like a call-and-response haenyeo song. Hello… Hello! What is your name? My name is… Do you have… Yes, I do… Where is… Turn right at…

Sang-mun, whom I did not respect, grasped the language so quickly that the Americans hired him to do almost the same job he’d done for the Japanese. He managed their supplies, making sure they were delivered from the port or airfield to the proper base or warehouse. They gave him a house to live in at their facility in Hamdeok, which was only three kilometers from Bukchon. He was on the road a lot, often staying away for nights at a time. Perhaps this is why Mi-ja did not become pregnant again, while I was just getting over another bout of morning sickness. No one could believe my belly had a third baby in it already, when Min-lee was about to turn two and Sung-soo was only nine months old. Sure, the haenyeo I dove with teased me, but I felt proud. I wished, though, that Mi-ja and I could be pregnant again together as we’d been during leaving-home water-work. I’d felt so close to her then and was certain Min-lee and Yo-chan would always be close as a result.

During Sang-mun’s long absences, Mi-ja walked through the olles to Bukchon with her son, and I’d veer toward Hamdeok on my way home from the bulteok so we could meet halfway—almost as we had done in Hado when we were young girls.

“I brought in two nets filled with sea urchins today,” I might say.

And she might respond with “I made kimchee.” Or washed clothes, dyed cloth, or ground grain.

Sometimes I’d come around the bend and see her with her arms resting on top of the stone wall, staring out to sea.

“Do you miss diving?” I might ask.

“The sea will forever be my home,” she always answered.

Once I saw bruises above her wrist. A man does not change with marriage, and I had my suspicions about Sang-mun, but I was hesitant to ask about him directly. One day I gathered my courage and made a more general inquiry. “Are you happy?”

“You and I are finally living with our husbands,” she replied. “We know things about them we didn’t know in those first few weeks of marriage. Sang-mun snores sometimes. He farts when he eats too much turnip. Often, when he comes home, I can tell he’s been drinking. It’s not our rice wine, but something he has with the Americans. I can’t stand the smell.”

These were nothing answers. She knew it. I knew it.

“I should be going home now,” she said, then called to her son. I watched them walk up the olle until they were out of sight.

As a haenyeo, wife, and mother, I focused on diving, my husband, my two children, Yu-ri, and the new baby to come. We enter the netherworld to earn our living and return to this one to save our children. We haenyeo are ruled by the moon and tides, but we’re also affected by various sets of three: The abundance of wind, rocks, and women. The lack of thieves, gates, and beggars. The three-step farming system that gives our pigs food from our behinds, fertilizer for our dry fields from the pigs’ behinds, and a pig that can eventually be eaten. We didn’t talk about it often, but Jeju was also known as the Island of the Three Disasters—wind, flood, and drought. Wind, again, always, and forever.

Now we had a new set of Three Disasters. First, another cholera epidemic broke out. Grandmother died. It hurt to lose her. It hurt even more that I hadn’t been able to care for her in her final hours. Mi-ja also lost her aunt and uncle. Second, the fall harvest was extremely poor. The crops that sustained us—millet, barley, and sweet potatoes—failed. We were instructed to go to American distribution points to pick up bags of grain, but the former Japanese collaborators, who’d been put in charge of rationing, stole these provisions to sell on the black market. Within forty-five days, the price of rice doubled, not that we could ever afford to buy rice for more than the New Year’s celebration. At the same time, the price for electricity—in those few places on the island that had it—jumped fivefold.

And third, people began to go without other staples. Jeju’s population had doubled with those who’d returned from Japan since liberation and refugees from the north since the division of the country, but the Americans forbade us to trade with our former occupiers, which meant haenyeo families had no money to buy food. There were days when we squeaked by on a mixture of seaweed and barley bran. Other families subsisted on the potato pulp usually given to pigs, so even those beasts had to get by on less. On the mornings when I didn’t dive, I strapped Sung-soo to my back and—with Min-lee and Yu-ri trailing behind me—joined other mothers on the rocky shore to search for sand crabs to make into love-from-a-mother’s-hands porridge. Anytime one of the children found one, a squeal would ring out almost like a sumbisori. I spent long afternoons picking the meat from those tiny shells to make the porridge.

Mi-ja and I agreed to stay out of political discussions even as events roiled around us. On the radio we heard Colonel Brown, a new American in charge, tell us that the long-range goal for Jeju was “to offer positive proof of the evils of communism” and “to show that the American way offers positive hope.”

“Only one problem,” Jun-bu grumbled. “They want us to accept their form of democracy, with an American-backed dictator who can be controlled, while the people of Korea—especially here on Jeju—want to hold our own elections, with our own slate of candidates, so we can vote our own way. Isn’t that what democracy is supposed to be about?”

He took this a step further when Mi-ja and her family came to visit. “We should shove out the Americans like we did the French missionaries,” he stated, sure of his position.

“That was a small rebellion decades ago,” Sang-mun argued back. “The Christians are still here, and more are coming now that the Americans have arrived.”

“But we should be independent! If we don’t stand up for what we believe, then we are guilty of collaborating in our hearts.”

Collaborating. That word again.

On one matter Sang-mun appeared to agree. “At the very least we should have free elections.” But then he warned, “Free elections or not, let me tell you something, friend. You should be careful. You’re a teacher. Too much trouble gets stirred up in schools. Remember what they did to the women organizers from the Hado Night School and to their teachers?”

They were all dead, but I didn’t worry because my husband wasn’t an organizer, and he wasn’t going to lead a revolt. Besides, we had more practical things to worry about, like how we were going to feed our children.

One thing led to another, though, and people—organized by the newly formed South Korean Labor Party—began to plan a nationwide demonstration to take place on March 1, 1947, nineteen months after the war ended and on the same date that my countrymen had once held gatherings to promote independence from Japan. Here on Jeju, no matter what side people were on—rightist, leftist, or none-ist—they came from across the island to the starting point at an elementary school in the city.

The sky was bright, and the spring air felt fresh. Jun-bu carried Min-lee, and I had Sung-soo tied to my back. (Yu-ri stayed home with Granny Cho.) Mi-ja and Sang-mun brought Yo-chan. Our husbands had arranged a meeting spot, so we easily found each other, even though the crowd was larger than the one my mother had taken Mi-ja and me to fifteen years ago. Instead of Japanese soldiers watching us, hundreds of policemen kept us under observation. Many of them rode horses.

Our husbands wandered off to join a group of men, while Mi-ja and I stayed with the children. Yo-chan and Min-lee toddled together through the crowd, never getting too far from us. Yo-chan had the sturdy legs of his mother. My daughter was already dark from the sun, but she was wiry like her father.

“A boy and a girl,” Mi-ja said, smiling. “When they marry—”

“We’ll both be very happy.” I looped my arm through hers.

We saw people we knew: the Kang sisters and their families, and haenyeo with whom we’d done leaving-home water-work. I said hello to some women from the collective in Bukchon; Mi-ja introduced me to a few of her neighbors in Hamdeok.

When the speeches started, our husbands returned to us. “Let’s move closer to the stage,” Jun-bu said. “It’s important the children hear what’s said.”

But even I could have recited the speeches. Korea should be independent. We should reject foreign influence. North and south should be reunited, so that we’d be one nation. The last speaker called for us to march, but getting twenty thousand people to walk in the same direction at once takes time. We finally began to move, with the mounted policemen herding us. We lost sight of Sang-mun and Jun-bu. I picked up my daughter, and Mi-ja carried her son. Just ahead of us a little boy—although later I heard it might have been a girl—about six years old jumped and laughed, excited by all that was happening around us. When his mother reached for him, he twirled away, straight into the path of one of the mounted police. The rider yanked the reins. The horse reared. The mother screamed, “Look out!” The boy fell. The horse’s hooves crashed down.

The policeman, up so high, pulled sharply on the reins, trying to turn the animal. As a crowd, we realized he wasn’t going to dismount to offer help, even though what had happened was clearly an accident. A chorus of voices called, “Get him! Get him! Get him!” People threw stones, which further startled the horse. The rider kicked the animal’s withers. It danced from side to side, trying to make its way through the crowd.

“He’s heading to the police station!” someone shouted.

“Don’t let him get away!”

The chants turned to “Black dog! Black dog!”

We came around a corner and into a large square. Police stood on the broad steps leading to the entrance of the station, with their bayonets thrust threateningly before them. They didn’t know what had happened. All they saw was an angry mob rushing toward them. The demonstrators near the front tried to stop, turn around, and flee, but we were in a raging sea, being pushed this way and that. We heard several popping sounds. This was followed by an eerie moment of silence, with everyone frozen in place, assessing. Then the screams began. People scattered in every direction. Amid the chaos, Mi-ja pulled the kids and me into a doorway. As the crowd thinned, we saw little islands of people dotting the square. At the center of each group, lying on the ground, a person. Some wailed in agony from their wounds. Death silence hung over others. An infant’s cries hiccuped through the square. Mi-ja and I looked at each other. We had to help.

With our children still in our arms, we trotted in the direction of the sound. We reached a woman, who lay facedown. A bullet had entered her back. Her body lay partially atop her baby. We set down Yo-chan and Min-lee next to each other, so Mi-ja could lift the dead woman’s shoulder and I could pull out the infant. Her mouth was a pink hole from which the most pitiable cries squawked out. Her eyes were squeezed so tightly shut that I could see where she’d have wrinkles one day. She was covered in blood.

Mi-ja and I rose together. I put the baby on my shoulder and patted her, while Mi-ja checked to see if she was injured. We were both concentrating so hard that when Sang-mun grabbed Mi-ja’s arm and jerked her away from me, we were completely startled.

He screamed in Mi-ja’s face. “How could you put my son in danger?”

“He wasn’t in danger,” she replied calmly. “I was holding him when the horse bolted—”

“What about the bullets?” His hands were clenched into fists. His face was as red as if he’d drunk a bottle of rice wine. “Did you not see danger in that?”

Jun-bu ran into the square. He visibly relaxed when he saw that the children and I were safe. He jogged over just as Mi-ja admitted, “I didn’t expect that the police would fire on us.” After a slight pause, she asked, “Did you?”

Sang-mun slapped Mi-ja. She staggered back and fell over Yo-chan and Min-lee. I rushed to her side. Jun-bu pulled Sang-mun away. My husband would lose in a fistfight, if it came to that, but he was taller and he carried the authority of a teacher.

Mi-ja had landed on her bottom. Red welts in the shape of Sang-mun’s hand had already begun to rise on her cheek. Yo-chan seemed scared but not particularly shocked or surprised. That’s when I realized that this couldn’t have been the first time he’d seen his father hit his mother. I felt terrible, sick with worry and horror. My grandmother had made this match—the daughter of a collaborator to the son of a collaborator—but Mi-ja and her husband could not have been more mismatched in their temperaments.

Sang-mun stuffed his hands in his pockets, whether hiding the weapons he’d used against my friend or keeping them ready for the next time, I couldn’t tell. When he looked away, I leaned in and, not for the first time, whispered to Mi-ja, “You could come live with us. Divorce is not uncommon for a haenyeo.”

She shook her head. “Where would I go? What would I do? We have a nice house on the base. My son is well fed, and he’s picking up English from the soldiers.”

She didn’t have to lay out the rest. My husband and I lived in a small house with our children and Yu-ri, and it was clear that we didn’t have enough to eat. If it had been me, though, I would have taken my children as far away as possible. I could work and support us, just as Mi-ja could provide for her son, if she wanted to.

Six people died in front of the police station—all but one of them shot in the back as they’d tried to flee. Another six were taken to the provincial hospital. Police posted there were so agitated—having heard the gunshots from the march—that they fired indiscriminately into the air and killed two passersby. A curfew was declared.

The next morning, my husband read to me the contradictory reports in the newspaper. “Some onlookers claim the boy was killed instantly by the horse. Others say he died later from his wounds.”

“That’s awful.”

“But listen to this,” Jun-bu went on, incensed. “The U.S. Twenty-fourth Corps has taken an entirely different view. They’re reporting that a child was slightly injured when he inadvertently ran into a policeman’s horse.”

I shook my head, but Jun-bu wasn’t done.

“Then the police department sent someone out to say the shootings in the square were justified as a matter of self-defense, because people armed with clubs had attacked the station.”

“But there was no attack, and no one carried anything other than a child or a placard mounted on a bamboo pole!”

“You don’t have to tell me.” Jun-bu shrugged in disgust. “They’re labeling the shooting ‘unfortunate’ and ‘inconsiderate.’ ”

It was all very upsetting, but Jun-bu went to the school and I went to the bulteok.

At the end of the day, when we were rowing back to shore, haenyeo on another boat hailed us. We rowed closer to trade gossip.

“Police have taken into custody the organizers of the demonstration, as well as twenty-five high school students,” their chief told us. “We’ve heard they’re beating the kids.”

We couldn’t believe it.

That night, in violation of the curfew, people pasted posters on walls across Jeju. The South Korean Labor Party was asking all islanders to protest the U.S. military government and fight against American imperialism. They asked for money to help the victims who’d survived and for the families of those who hadn’t. They demanded that the police who’d fired the shots be brought to trial and sentenced to death. They requested the immediate removal of any Japanese sympathizers or collaborators from the ranks of the police. Last, they implored all Jeju people to join a general strike on March 10.

The leader of this movement was twenty-two years old and a teacher. Jun-bu told me he did not know him.

Farmers, fishermen, factory workers, and haenyeo joined the strike, as did policemen, teachers, and post office workers. Businessmen came out of harbor offices, banks, and transportation companies. Shopkeepers shut their doors. The strike was an immediate and overwhelming success, but people very high up labeled it red-influenced. This caused the American military government to side with the hard-liners and the government on the mainland to send members from the Northwest Young Men’s Association to help maintain order.

I went to the bulteok not to work but to trade information. Everyone had something to say, none of it good.

“Most of the men from the Northwest Young Men’s Association escaped from north of the Thirty-eighth Parallel. They’re the worst!” Gi-won seethed.

Sang-mun had also managed to flee from the communist-held territory, so I had an idea of what that experience could do to a man.

“A lot of them are delinquents, thugs, and criminals,” Jang Ki-yeong, my neighbor, said. Then she added another set of three almost like a chant. “They’re fierce, violent, and unforgiving.”

“I heard that too,” Gi-won agreed. “They arrived here with nothing. That’s how quickly they had to leave their homes. Now they’re being told to live off the land. Just you watch. They’re going to be even more ravenous than the Japanese when it comes to stealing our food and other resources.”

But it was Ki-yeong’s daughter, Yun-su, who relayed what had to be the most frightening piece of information. “A friend told me that they’re like rabid dogs when it comes to communism. They hate Jeju, because they think we’re red in our thinking. I’ve heard they’ve labeled it Little Moscow. They call Jeju the island of nightmares.”

A few nervous chuckles erupted, then just as quickly disappeared.

A grandmother-diver, who’d been quiet up to now, spoke. “My daughter married out to a village on the other side of the island. Over there, they have a saying about these new men. Even a baby stops crying when it hears the words Northwest Young Men’s Association.”

It was a warm day, with the sun shining down on us in the bulteok, but a chill went through me, and it seemed to hit the others as well.

She went on in a low voice, and I sensed all of us leaning in to hear her. “My daughter says that the people in her husband’s village call those men the shadow of a nightmare.” She tipped her head in Gi-won’s direction. “Our chief says those men will steal our food and other resources. Think about what that might mean. People are already learning the answer on the other side of the island. What’s our most valuable resource? Our daughters. Those of you who have them should quickly arrange marriages. In my daughter’s village, girls are being married out as young as thirteen.”

This news produced some gasps.

“We didn’t even do that when the Japanese were here,” Gi-won said.

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.

“You have many burdens,” Ki-yeong complimented me as I herded my children and Yu-ri.

“I’m a lucky woman,” I responded. To return her praise, I said, “Your daughter follows in your wake. She’s a good baby-diver.”

“Your daughter will do the same one day.”

“That will be the greatest gift she can give me.”

We entered the village. Up ahead, someone passed out leaflets.

“Here. Take one,” the young man said.

“I can’t read,” I said.

The young man tried to press his wares into the hands of Ki-yeong and Yun-su.

“We can’t read either,” Yun-su admitted.

Just then two policemen came around a corner. When they saw the boy, one of them shouted, “Halt!” The other yelled, “Stop right there!”

The color drained from the boy’s face. Then his eyes hardened. He tossed the leaflets and took off. The policemen sprinted after him—toward us. I picked up Min-lee, put an arm around Yu-ri, who had Sung-soo on her back, and together we moved toward the square. In the confusion, Yun-su came with me instead of with her mother, sisters, and grandmother. Gunfire—the same horrible popping sounds we’d heard in the square during the demonstration—burst around us. Next to me, Yun-su stumbled and fell. She rolled over and stood up. Blood oozed from her shoulder. It looked like a surface wound, but I didn’t wait to examine it.

“Yu-ri, hold on to me!” My sister-in-law, horrified, grabbed the hem of my tunic in her fist. Min-lee was crying so hard she could barely breathe. I shifted her weight and then wrapped my other arm around Yun-su’s waist. We were five people moving as one. When we got to the square, we collapsed to the ground. Min-lee still screamed. Yu-ri, white with terror, hunkered next to me. Yun-su’s blood dripped everywhere. I ran my shaking hands over Yu-ri, Min-lee, and Sung-soo. They hadn’t been hurt.

A siren rang through the village. Neighbors burst from their homes—some of them armed with farming tools—to chase the two policemen who’d shot at us. I didn’t stay to see what would happen. I gathered my group, and together we went to Yun-su’s house. Ki-yeong and the other relatives stood in their courtyard, looking frantic. When they saw Yun-su, they leapt into action. One person put water on to boil. Another shook out a length of clean persimmon cloth and ripped it into strips to use for bandages. But when Ki-yeong appeared with a knife, scissors, and tweezers, the poor girl went limp in my arms, her legs collapsing beneath her as she lost consciousness. She was hurt, but her injuries weren’t life threatening. Once the smell of blood was gone from her wound, she’d be able to dive again.

I had to get my family home. We retraced our steps to the square, where villagers had the two policemen in ropes. People yelled and cursed. Someone kicked the smaller policeman.

“Jabbing him with your old sandal is not enough!” an old man railed. “Let’s take them to the police outpost in Hamdeok! We’ll make sure they’re punished!”

The crowd roared its approval. I should have followed my plan and gone home, but I roared along with everyone. My terror had turned to fury. How could other Koreans—even if they weren’t from Jeju—shoot at us? We were innocent people, and this had to stop! So we joined the throng as they dragged the two policemen through the olle and along the shore the three kilometers to Hamdeok. Barely an hour had passed since my family and I left our dry fields.

“We want to lodge a complaint against these two!” one of the elders from Bukchon called out when we reached the small police station. “Let us tell you our grievances.”

The Japanese had listened when we complained, but not our own people. Instead, I watched in horror as some policemen came out on the roof, ran to a mounted machine gun, and, without warning, began to fire. It took a moment to realize they’d fired blanks, but we’d already scattered like bugs on the floor of a latrine when startled by the light of an oil lamp. Hiding behind some barrels, I snuck a quick look to see if it was safe. There, in the window of the police station, staring out, was Sang-mun. I fell back out of sight. My heart dropped to the pit of my stomach. My eyes had to be lying, but when I peeked out again, there he was. Our eyes met.

I didn’t stop to visit Mi-ja on my way back to Bukchon. I didn’t know what I could possibly say to her. For the first time in our many years of friendship, I wasn’t sure I could trust her.

My husband was waiting for us at the front gate when we got home. Wordlessly, he took me in his arms. I sobbed out what I’d seen.

“You’re safe,” he said. “That’s all that matters.”

But I was deeply ashamed that I’d let the anger and confusion of the moment put my children and Yu-ri at risk. I promised myself I’d never let that happen again. Not as a mother. Not as a wife.

The next day, the newspaper reported that the police had “needed” to crack down on those distributing leaflets, but that the culprit in Bukchon had gotten away. Two days after that, a report leaked from the U.S. Twenty-fourth Corps also made the front page. My husband read the story:

“Two women and one man were wounded in a wild gunfight between leftists distributing leaflets and police in Bukchon—”

“But that’s not what happened!” I cried, indignant.

Jun-bu returned to the article. “A mob of approximately two hundred attacked the police station in Hamdeok,” he read. “Police reinforcements were required to disperse the mob.”

“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

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.

“The Americans and the United Nations have vowed we will be free to vote as we wish,” he told me. But then reality brought him back to earth. “The Americans support Rhee Syngman as their preferred candidate. His biggest backers are former Japanese collaborators. Anyone who is against him is automatically labeled a red. Anyone who wants to punish former collaborators is labeled a red. That means that just about everyone on Jeju—including us—will be labeled a red.”

I worried about Jun-bu’s increasingly dark frame of mind.

A radio broadcast from a station above the Thirty-eighth Parallel offered an invitation to leaders from the south to go to Pyongyang to discuss reunification and write a constitution that would solve all our problems. In response, the U.S. military government and Governor Yoo strengthened their anti-communist crackdown on Jeju. Former Governor Park, originally appointed by the U.S. military, was the first to be arrested. He was famous, and people were shocked. Then the body of a young man was pulled from a river. He was identified as a protester. A witness to one of the torture sessions reported that the student had been hung from the ceiling by his hair and his testicles pierced with awls. There could not have been a mother on the island who did not imagine the grief she would feel if this boy had been her son.

In the early hours of April 3, we were roused from sleep by the sounds of gunfire, yelling, and people clattering through the olles. Jun-bu and I protected our children with our bodies. I was terrified. The children whimpered. The commotion seemed to last forever, but maybe it only felt that way because the night was so dark. Finally, Bukchon fell silent. Had arrests been made? How many people were shot, and how many had died? The gloomy shadows revealed no answers. Then we began to hear shouts.

“Hurry!”

“Come quick!”

Jun-bu got up and slipped on his trousers.

“Don’t go out there,” I begged.

“Whatever happened is over. People may be hurt. I must go.”

After he left, I held the children even closer. From outside, I heard men speaking in urgent voices.

“Look at the hills! They’ve lit the old beacon towers!”

“They’re sending a message around the island!”

“But what’s the message?” my husband asked.

The men muttered back and forth about it for a while longer but arrived at no conclusions. Jun-bu returned and lay down next to me. The children fell back asleep, curled around us like piglets. When dawn streaked the sky with pink hues, I quietly got up, changed into day clothes, and went outside. I was about to go to the village well when Jun-bu joined me.

“I’m coming with you. I don’t want you going alone.”

“The children—”

“They’re still asleep,” he said, picking up a water jar. “It’ll be safer to leave them here for a few minutes than to take them with us.”

We went to the front gate and peeked out. The olle was empty except for a few abandoned bamboo spears. We hurried to the main square, where we discovered that rebels had broken into the village’s one-room police station. Furniture littered the cobblestones. Papers drifted across the ground, pushed by the wind. A few uniformed men scrambled to pick them up. One man had a bandage on his head. Another limped. Some villagers had gathered under the tree to peer at a poster tacked to it. Jun-bu and I pushed our way to the front.

“Tell us what it says, Teacher,” someone said.

“Dear citizens, parents, brothers, and sisters,” he read, his eyes moving over the written characters. “Yesterday one of our student-brothers was found killed. Today we come down from the mountains with arms in hand to raid police outposts all over the island.”

The crowd murmured, confused, scared. Some voices of support rose for the rebels. Retribution had been exacted for the boy who’d been tortured and killed.

Jun-bu continued to read: “We will oppose country-dividing elections to the death. We will liberate families who have been separated by a line. We will drive the American cannibals and their running dogs from our country. Conscientious public officials and police, we call on you to rise up and help us fight for independence.”

I didn’t care for the language, but the sentiment was real to all of us. We wanted our own unified country. We wanted to choose our own future.

“Fight! Fight! Fight!” men shouted, their arms raised. Soon women’s voices joined in. But Jun-bu and I had learned to be wary. We returned home to continue our own lives as word passed from mouth to mouth. By the time we’d eaten breakfast, gotten Granny Cho settled with the children and Yu-ri, and I’d made my way to the bulteok, every haenyeo seemed to have another piece to add to the night’s story.

“The South Korean Labor Party was behind the attacks,” Gi-won said once we were settled around the fire.

“No! It was rebels, plain and simple,” Ki-yeong said, scratching an ear.

“I heard five hundred insurgents came down Grandmother Seolmundae—”

“It was a lot more than that! Three thousand people joined the rebels as they went from village to village. That’s how they hit so many police stations at once.”

“And that’s not all. They blew up roads and bridges.”

“With what?” someone asked, dubious.

Before an answer could come, another diver exclaimed, “They even cut telephone lines!”

This was serious. None of us had telephones in our homes, so the line in the police station was the only way a village could call for emergency help from Jeju City.

“It looked to me like they were armed with little more than what we take into the sea,” Gi-won said.

“You looked?” Ki-yeong asked in awe.

“You think anyone would dare do something to me?” Gi-won jutted out her chin to make her point. “I went to my front gate. I saw men—and some women—carrying sickles, scythes, shovels, and—”

“They sound like farmers, not haenyeo,” Ki-yeong speculated.

“They are farmers,” her daughter said.

“And some fishermen too.”

“This isn’t about all that leftist and rightist stuff the men on the radio talk about,” Gi-won said. “It’s about not wanting to be told what to do by another country—”

“And reunifying the country. I have family in the north.”

“Who here hasn’t been touched? First, we had the Japanese. Then the war. And now all the problems of living and eating—”

“Was anyone killed?” I asked.

The bulteok quieted. In the excitement, no one had stopped to consider who might have gotten hurt or how badly.

Gi-won knew the answer. “Four rebels and thirty policemen were killed around the island—”

The woman next to me groaned. “Thirty policemen?”

“Hyun!”

“Aigo!”

“And two officers were lost in Hamdeok,” Gi-won added.

That was only three kilometers away. Mi-ja. Maybe I should have been more scared for her, but ever since seeing Sang-mun that day in the police station, I had to figure she was safe.

“Lost? What does lost mean? Did they desert?”

“They were kidnapped!”

Fear played across the faces of the women around me. Attack and retribution had become a way of life for us, and we were all anxious.

“No one died in Bukchon,” Gi-won said. “We can be grateful for that.”

The relief was unmistakable. If no one was killed here, then we might not experience reprisals. We could hope that nothing would happen.

Once in the sea, I pushed aside thoughts of dry land. By the time we returned to the bulteok a few hours later to eat and warm up, our worries about last night’s events had diminished. If we could go back to boasting about what we’d caught, then maybe others would shrug off the raids as well.

The U.S. colonel in charge was also dismissive. “I’m not interested in the cause of the uprising,” Colonel Brown told a reporter on the radio that night. “Two weeks will be enough to quash the revolt.” But he was wrong. This day, April 3—Sa-sam—came to be called the 4.3 Incident, although we did not yet know that this date would be so important in our lives.

Two days later, Jun-bu told me that the U.S. military government had created something called the Jeju Military Command. A more stringent curfew was set in place.

“But how am I supposed to stay in our home between sunrise and sunset, when water needs to be hauled, fuel gathered, and pigs cared for?” I asked my husband.

Jun-bu ran his hands through his hair. He had no solution.

On the radio, we heard the commander of the Ninth Regiment of the Korean Constabulary explain that he was trying to negotiate peace: “I’ve asked for the complete surrender of the rebels, but they’re demanding that the police be disarmed, all government officials be dismissed, paramilitary groups—like the Northwest Young Men’s Association—be sent away, and that the two Koreas be reunified.”

Naturally, neither side could agree to those conditions. After that, the constabulary brought in nearly a thousand men to strengthen their force on Jeju. Some of those men were sent to guard villages along the coast like Bukchon, Hado, and Hamdeok, for which, I’ll admit, I was grateful. Then—and all this we heard about either on the radio or through gossip—the constabulary climbed Mount Halla and attacked the rebels. By the end of April, Jeju City was completely cordoned off, and police were conducting house-to-house searches to weed out what they were calling communist sympathizers. But many people in the constabulary and the police were from Jeju. When they could no longer bear what was happening, they defected to the rebels in the mountains. We even had a few people leave Bukchon to join the renegades.

Major General Dean, the U.S. military governor now in charge of Korea, came to our island to “assess the situation.” He repeated a rumor that the North Korean Red Army had landed on Jeju and now commanded the rebels. This was followed by rumors about North Korean naval ships and a Soviet submarine circling the island. These false stories cemented a hard-line policy. Major General Dean sent another battalion to Jeju. And while the order was that the U.S. Army should not intervene, it kept track of Korean operations by using reconnaissance aircraft. When I worked in the dry fields, those planes passed overhead, hunting for their prey. At night, I saw cruisers out at sea using searchlights to scan the horizon. When I went to the five-day market, vegetable peddlers from the mid-mountain area told me they’d come across American officers riding in jeeps or on horseback on Korean-led missions. By the end of six weeks, four thousand people had been arrested.

At the beginning of the seventh week, Jun-bu invited the women from the collective who didn’t know how to read or write to our house to teach us how to vote. Even if the election was rigged, we wanted to take this opportunity to try to have a voice in our government. “You don’t have to recognize the written characters for the candidates’ names,” he explained. “All you need to know is where he comes on the ballot. Is he number one, two, or three? It’s your choice. Then you mark the number of the person you want.”

But when we went to the polling place, a group of men barred us from entering. “Turn around. Go home,” they told us.

Once again, my news came from the bulteok as the haenyeo jabbered like chickens the next morning. In Bukchon, we hadn’t been allowed to vote, but that was nothing compared to what had happened elsewhere.

“The police, the constabulary, and the Northwest Young Men’s Association blocked—”

“Jeju’s main road going east—”

“And west—”

“So rebels wouldn’t be able to pass.”

Not for the first time, Ki-young’s daughter, Yun-su, seemed to have a clearer sense of what had transpired. “None of that mattered,” she said, and I heard something like pride in her voice. “Nothing stopped the rebels. They raided polling places and burned ballot boxes. They kidnapped election officials. They cut more telephone lines—”

And then the others were off again.

“Destroyed bridges—”

“And blocked the very roads they weren’t supposed to pass.”

In the end, no votes were counted from Jeju, and the Americans’ choice, Rhee Syngman, was elected president, although we hadn’t yet officially become a country.

The next morning, when I returned to the bulteok, yesterday’s nervous twittering had been replaced by anxiety. Surely, the government would punish us for the troubles of election night.

“I’m chief of our collective,” Gi-won said, “but as a woman, I have no choice in what happens next.”

“No woman has a say.”

“No child has a say. And the elderly?”

“They have no authority either,” Gi-won answered for all of us.

Most of our fathers and husbands had spent their days thinking grand thoughts and taking care of babies, so they were powerless too. But everyone—even the innocent, even the young and the elderly, even those who did not have a husband to read the propaganda to them from the newspaper, or those, like Yu-ri, with no comprehension of what was happening—was forced to take a side.

In late May, Mi-ja arrived one day at my door. She was alone. She’d lost weight and her color was bad. I invited her in, but I couldn’t help being apprehensive. While I made citrus tea, she visited with Yu-ri. “Have you been good?” she asked. “I’ve missed you.” Yu-ri smiled, but she didn’t recognize Mi-ja.

“I’ve missed you too,” she said when I came with the tea.

“You stopped coming to the olle,” I replied.

“You could have visited me.”

“I have the children—”

“A girl this time?” She scooted toward the cradle, where Kyung-soo slept.

I held up a hand. “A boy.” As she slid back to her original spot, I finished my excuse. “The children and Yu-ri are too much for me to take to Hamdeok. It’s not easy—”

“Or safe.”

“Or safe most of all,” I agreed.

Silence hung between us. I couldn’t fathom what she wanted. She took a breath and let it out slowly. “Sang-mun planted a baby in me not long after the march. I was sick, so I couldn’t come to see you.”

A pang of guilt. Of course, there had to be a reason.

“A boy or a girl?” I asked.

She lowered her eyes. “A girl. She lived two days.”

“Aigo. I’m so sorry.”

She regarded me, hurt. “I needed you.”

Whatever caution I’d felt disappeared. I’d failed my deep-heart friend.

“Your husband,” I ventured. “Has he been good to you?”

“He was gentle when I was pregnant.” Before the true meaning of her words could sink in, she went on. “You can’t know how hard it is for him. He goes from meeting to meeting and from place to place all over the island. The Second Regiment’s Third Battalion is now stationed in Sehwa nearby, but they’re headquartered in Hamdeok. It’s a lot of pressure.”

“That must be difficult—”

She sighed and looked away. “Many people, when they envision being faced with hardship, believe they will fight back. But when I was a child and had to live with Aunt Lee-ok and Uncle Him-chan, I learned what really happens. They didn’t feed me, as you know. By the time I wanted to fight back, I was too weak.”

I struggled to find something to say to boost her spirits. “That terrible situation brought us together. For me, it will always be a happy result.”

But her mind was not on friendship. “Some women imagine committing suicide, but how can that be a path for a mother?” Her eyes glistened with tears. “I have Yo-chan. I must live for him.”

I’d known Mi-ja a long time, and I’d never seen her so melancholy. Not only was she experiencing the turmoil around us but she’d also had the cataclysm of losing her child. And then there was her husband. She didn’t look bruised, but I wasn’t seeing her naked or in her water clothes. I put a hand on her arm.

“Women live quietly,” I said. “However angry or broken a woman might get, she does not think about beating someone, does she?”

“My husband is married to a bad person.”

Her comment baffled me. “How can you say that?”

“I failed him. I lost the baby. I don’t bring home food. I don’t keep the house the way his mother did—”

I cut her off. “Don’t defend him or justify his actions as though what he does to you is your fault.”

“Maybe it is.”

“No wife asks to be hit.”

“Your mother was more understanding of men than you are. She said we should have sympathy for them. She said they have nothing to do and no purpose to push them through the day. They’re bored and—”

“But your husband can’t use those reasons! He works. He has his own life.”

This didn’t stop Mi-ja from continuing to make excuses for him. “He went through so much to come home.” Then she set her jaw. “His violence and cruelty are the way of the island these days.”

But he’d been violent long before our current troubles…

Helplessness settled over me. “I wish we could go back to the way things were when we visited in the olle every day—”

“But it’s not safe. We both need to protect our children.” So, we’d circled back to the beginning of the visit. After a moment, she added, “I hope our separation doesn’t last so long this time.”

“And I hope the next time I see you, a baby will be suckling at your breast.”

I walked her to the gate. Even as we said our goodbyes, I suspected I didn’t know just how bad things were for her.

On August 15, the Republic of Korea was formally established in the south. One month later, Kim Il-sung, with help from the USSR, founded the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the north. Although the armies of neither the Americans nor the Soviets left completely, the division of our country appeared to be settled. It seemed like life had calmed down, and I’d be able to see Mi-ja again. But all through early fall, the different factions continued to fight on Jeju. The military was armed with machine guns and other modern weapons supplied by the U.S. Army, while the rebels protected themselves with Japanese swords, a handful of rifles, and bamboo spears. Then, on November 17, 1948, President Rhee placed Jeju under martial law and issued the first order:

It was to be called the ring of fire. Anything and anyone found violating the order would suffer a scorched-earth policy.

When I went to the bulteok, we discussed what this might mean for us.

“Where will all the mountain people go?” one of the women asked.

“They’re being sent to the shore,” Gi-won told us.

“But there’s nowhere to put them,” another diver said.

“That’s the point,” Gi-won replied. “No one can hide at the sea’s edge.”

I asked the question I felt sure we were all thinking. “Are we in danger?”

Gi-won shrugged. “We already live on the safe side of the ring of fire.”

The next day, the rain poured down as though the heavens were weeping. Men in the Korean Constabulary, Jeju police, and U.S. military troops herded the first few hundred mountain refugees to the outskirts of Bukchon. The women and children did not look like troublemakers to me. Apart from little boys and a few old men who walked with their heads bent, I saw few males in the trail of anguish. I could only come to one conclusion: most men were already dead. The children did not talk or sing to make the burden of their situation less heavy. Families carried whatever they’d been able to salvage from their homes—quilts, sleeping mats, cooking utensils, bags of grain, earthenware jars filled with pickled vegetables, dried sweet potatoes—but they’d been forced to abandon their livestock. They made camp as best they could, building lean-tos from reeds and pine branches.

In Bukchon, we were ordered to use the stones that lay in our fields to build a wall around the village. Men, so unused to hard labor, suffered. Jun-bu came home with blisters on his hands, and his back ached. The job also pulled women from working in either their wet or their dry fields. Even children had to help. Once the wall was finished, we were forced to stand guard day and night, armed with homemade spears.

“If you let someone in who is proven to be a rebel,” a police officer warned us, “then you’ll all be punished.”

The refugees soon ran out of the food they’d brought with them. At night, moans of hunger drifted over the moonlit fields, through the rocky walls, and into my house. Whenever the wind shifted, the bad odors of unwashed bodies and no sanitation soured our nostrils, eyes, and throats.

One day as I was walking past the camp a woman beckoned to me.

“I’m a mother. You look like a mother too. Will you help me?”

Although mid-mountain people had always looked down on the haenyeo, our hurt feelings had moved to pity as we witnessed what had happened to them. So of course I asked what I could do.

“I’m not a diver,” the woman said. “I don’t know how to harvest from the sea. Can you teach me?”

I was willing, but when I learned she didn’t even know how to swim, I had to decline. When she started to weep, I whispered, “Come to my field tonight. I will leave a basket for you with sweet potatoes and some other things.”

As I gave her directions, she wept even harder. Soon I heard about other women in Bukchon who left food in their fields or by the wall to the camp. But after one of my neighbors was caught doing this, taken away, tortured, and killed for her charity, I did not take the risk again.

The refugees living outside Bukchon and other seaside villages had obeyed and come to the shore, but others—some fearful, some obstinate, and some rebels—fled inland and tried to hide in remote mountain villages or make new homes in caves or lava tubes. This was the worst thing they could have done. Grandmother Seolmundae couldn’t protect them, and the ring of fire became literal as entire villages were burned. Soldiers set fire to Gyorae. When people tried to escape, they were shot and thrown into the flames to destroy the evidence. Some of the victims were babies and children. In Haga, soldiers killed twenty-five villagers, including a woman in her last month of pregnancy. Then they burned the village. Nearly every day, when we rowed to the day’s diving spot, we saw plumes of smoke wafting from our great mountain and out over the sea.

I went to the five-day market, but there was nothing to buy. The woman in the dry-goods stand passed along what she knew. “U.S. ships have blockaded the island,” she said. “No supplies can be brought in to help those in hiding or provide food to the tens of thousands of refugees now living inside the ring of fire.”

She was clearly knowledgeable, so I asked, “What about food for us?”

The woman grunted. “No one on the island—not even those of us on the right side of the ring of fire—will be able to buy goods anymore.”

Worse—so much worse—there came a day when we were told that haenyeo could no longer dive. Japanese soldiers had once stolen our food and horses, but now our own countrymen were starving us. My husband and I each got by on a single sweet potato a day, so we could give more food to our children. But they lost weight, their hair turned dull, and their eyes began to sink into their heads.

When someone told me that the haenyeo collective in Gimnyongree had gotten permission to open a restaurant to serve police and army troops, I passed the information on to Gi-won. She called for a meeting in the bulteok.

“The haenyeo in Gimnyongree are hoping to prevent police violence, but we will not dive for the very people who are killing our own,” Gi-won said, adamant. “Wouldn’t we be truer to our island if we offered shelter, food, and clothing to the insurgents? These are our people. They could be our sons, brothers, or cousins.”

“We’d be killed if we were caught!” Jang Ki-yeong exclaimed.

“It’s better to go hungry together than to die,” Yun-su added.

“Why should we help them?” someone else asked. “The rebels steal food and kill those who try to protect what they grew. I’m afraid of bears as well as tigers.”

This saying had recently sprung up, and it meant that the police and the constabulary were to be feared as much as the rebels and insurgents.

“I don’t care who started what or when,” Ki-yeong said. “I just want peace.”

Not one person agreed to Gi-won’s suggestion. It was the first time we’d turned against our leader, and it showed that we’d lost all sympathy for the rebels.

More news filtered through the stone wall that protected Bukchon. In Tosan, soldiers killed all men between the ages of eighteen and forty. One hundred and fifty died. In Jocheon, two hundred villagers turned themselves in to the military to prevent being killed in a battle against the insurgents. All but fifty of them were executed anyway. We tried to tell ourselves that none of this could be happening, but it was. A third of Jeju’s population had been forced to relocate to the shore, and so many people had been killed that no one could guess the count. The skies were black with crows, who flew from one scene of death to the next. Picking at the dead made them stronger; they mated, and hatched even more crows. The flocks grew bigger and blacker. I couldn’t look at them without feeling ill.

American soldiers found nearly one hundred bodies in a mountain village, while another group of their soldiers stumbled across the execution of seventy-six men, women, and children in a different village. The Americans may not have actively participated in the atrocities, but they did nothing to prevent them either.

“Is not doing something their way of sending us a message about their real intentions?” Jun-bu asked.

Once again, I had no answer.

After men and young boys were killed in yet another set of mountain villages, the survivors—women, children, and the elderly—were housed in military tents set up by American soldiers in the playground of Hamdeok Elementary School. When there was no more room, the Korean Constabulary executed the surplus of people at the edge of a cliff, so they’d fall into the sea.

I was able to anticipate my husband’s question before he asked it. “Did the Americans with their tents and surveillance planes not see that?”

It worried me to see my husband’s frustrations growing, but the person I thought about most when I heard what had happened in Hamdeok was Mi-ja. She lived there.

We’d grown up with the Three Abundances, but we weren’t prepared for the Three-All Strategy—kill all, burn all, loot all—of the scorched-earth policy. The impact was hard for us to absorb. You hear about an incident but don’t see a mother, a child, a brother. You don’t feel the individual suffering, but we began to hear those stories too: A family was dragged from its home. The daughter-in-law was made to spread her legs so her father-in-law could mount her. When he couldn’t finish the deed, both were killed. I heard of a soldier who heated his revolver in a fire, then shoved it inside a pregnant woman just to see what would happen. Widows and mothers of sons who’d been killed often went mad and threw themselves off cliffs, sailing to their loved ones in the Afterworld. In one village, the girls were kidnapped, gang-raped for two weeks, and then executed, along with all the young men from that village. Wives were forced to marry policemen and soldiers, because marriage was a way to seize property legally. Some haenyeo sold off their dry fields to buy a husband or son out of jail. The most unfortunate women agreed to marry police officers in exchange for the release from jail of a husband, brother, son, or other male relative. Too often, those loved ones were killed anyway. These things I wished I could erase from my mind, but they would never, ever, go away.

I wanted our family to return home to Hado, where we could be with Do-saeng, my father, and my brother, but Jun-bu felt we should stay in Bukchon. “I need to keep teaching,” he said. “We need the money.”

Schools had remained open to keep boys and young men occupied. Jun-bu had struggled with his part in this, but he was right that we needed the money when we haenyeo weren’t allowed to dive. We were all hungry and getting weaker every day. My children didn’t have the energy to cry, but they whimpered at night. All I could do was make meager offerings to Halmang Samseung in the hope she would prevent my breast milk from drying up. If it did, I wasn’t sure how I would nourish Kyung-soo.

Life-Giving Air

Winters can be long and dreary on Jeju, and the January of 1949 was particularly so. One night, the wind seemed to blow worse than ever through cracks in the walls of the house. My children could barely move, because their clothes were so padded that their arms and legs stuck out from their bodies like branches. Jun-bu and I laid out our sleeping mats, all of them touching. Min-lee and Sung-soo crawled off their mats and snuggled close to us, seeking extra warmth. I held Kyung-soo in the crook of my arm. Even with the oil lamps off and the room in utter darkness, the children fidgeted from cold and hunger. We didn’t know how to explain our misfortune to them when we were having a hard time understanding it ourselves, but I knew that if I could calm Min-lee, then Sung-soo would quiet as well. A story might help.

“We’re lucky that our island has so many goddesses to watch over us.” I spoke softly, hoping my lowered voice would bring tranquillity. “But we have one real-life woman, who was as brave and persistent as any goddess. Her name was Kim Mandeok, and she lived three hundred years ago. She was the daughter of an aristocrat, who’d been exiled here. Her mother was…” I was not going to say prostitute. “Her mother worked in Jeju City. Kim Mandeok did not follow in her mother’s wake.”

Jun-bu smiled at me in the darkness and squeezed my hand.

“Kim Mandeok opened an inn and became a merchant. She sold the great specialties of Jeju—horsehair, sea mustard, abalone, and dried ox gallstones. Then came the Most Horrendous Famine. People ate every dog. Soon, only water was left over, and our island doesn’t have much water. Kim Mandeok had to help. She sold everything she owned and then paid one thousand gold bars to buy rice for the people. When the king heard what she’d done, he offered to repay her, but she refused. He said he would give her whatever she desired, but her single request was bigger than the moon. She asked to make a pilgrimage to the mainland to visit sacred sites. The king kept his word, and she became not only the first native-born islander but also the first woman in two centuries to leave Jeju to go to the mainland. It is through Kim Mandeok that the inconceivable became conceivable. She paved the way for your father and so many others to leave Jeju.”

“Kim Mandeok was a woman with a generous heart,” Jun-bu whispered to Min-lee. “She was selfless and only thought of others. She was, little one, like your own mother.”

The children drifted off to sleep. I placed the baby between his sister and brother and moved into my husband’s arms. It was too cold to remove all our clothes. He pulled his pants down over his rump. I wiggled out of mine. Our hunger and desperation—and all the death and destruction around us—drove us to do the very thing that created life, that said there would be a future, that reminded us of our own humanity.

Not many hours later, we were awakened by what we’d come to recognize as gunfire. This was not uncommon in those days. The jolting to consciousness. The moment of terror. The instinctual gathering of my children. Jun-bu wrapping his arms around us all. Footsteps echoing through the olles. Shouts and gruff whispers insinuating their way into our room. Followed by silence. Soon, the baby dozed off, and the tension in my other children’s bodies melted as they returned to the limpness of slumber. Jun-bu and I lay awake together, listening, until we too fell back asleep.

When dawn broke and Min-lee and I went outside to gather dried dung and haul water, we found Mi-ja standing in the small courtyard in front of my house. She looked better than when I’d seen her eight months earlier. The sheen of her hair caught the morning sun’s rays. Her eyes were bright. She’d gained a little weight. Air puffed in clouds from her mouth. She was alone.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, thoroughly surprised but also a little wary. I was relieved to see she was all right, but a part of me felt I had to be careful, knowing the side her husband had taken.

Before she could answer, Min-lee squealed, “Where’s Yo-chan?” The two children would turn four in June. They were old enough to remember each other despite our infrequent visits.

Mi-ja smiled at her. “He went with his father to see his grandparents in Jeju City. It wasn’t far out of their way to drop me off. For now”—she turned her gaze to me—“I’m visiting my oldest friend.”

I had many questions, but first the required pleasantries. “Have you eaten? Will you spend the night?” Inside, I was wondering what I could feed her, where she would sleep in our small teacher’s house, and how her husband would respond.

“No need. They’ll be back for me this afternoon.” She tilted her head. “Give me a jar. Take me to the village well. Let me help.”

Min-lee skipped away to find another jar. Mi-ja put her hands on my cheeks. I couldn’t tell if she was taking in all the changes that hardship had brought to my face or was memorizing it to sustain her until the next time we saw each other. Either way, I felt love passing through her fingers and into my flesh. How could I ever have doubted her?

Min-lee returned with a water jar nestled in a basket. Mi-ja put this on her back, then looped an arm through mine. To Min-lee, she said, “Lead the way.”

Mi-ja moved with such ease. She had a frail quality to her steps that served as a camouflage for the strength of her body and mind.

I heard a commotion up ahead. I wanted to go back home, but it’s the duty of women and girls to fetch water for their families. Bukchon’s well was in the square, so that’s where we had to go. If my daughter and I were no longer terrified by the sound of gunshots in the night, I can also say—with sadness—that we were no longer horror-struck by the sight of a dead body, but when we reached the square and found two soldiers, identifiable by their uniforms, lying on stretchers, Mi-ja gasped loudly. Both men had been shot in the chest. Their blood had seeped through their shirts in the shapes of grotesque flowers. About a dozen elders stood over the lifeless forms, arguing.

“We need to take them to the military headquarters in Hamdeok,” one of the old men said. “That way we can prove we had nothing to do with this.”

“No,” another responded indignantly. “All that will show is that we let them die here.”

“How did we let them die? They were here to protect us from the insurgents—”

Mi-ja had gone as white as seafoam. I took her elbow, and the three of us pushed through the men to the well. We filled our jars and then retreated, hoping to return home quickly.

“If we take them to Hamdeok, the military will retaliate.”

“If we don’t take them, the military will retaliate.”

“But we didn’t do anything!” another elder shouted, as though his raised voice would bring back the two lives.

Once in the olle, Min-lee babbled happily, as if nothing had happened. “Is Yo-chan good at counting? Has he learned any characters yet? Look how I can count! One, two, three…”

But what had become normal to us was horrifying to my old friend, who still looked shaken and hadn’t spoken since we’d first reached the square.

“Maybe you should go home,” I said. “Trouble could be coming. Jun-bu can walk you.”

“No, I’m fine,” she mumbled. Then, a little louder, “I agree with the elder who said they should take the bodies to Hamdeok. The military will recognize innocence when they see it.”

On the surface, this was how it had been our entire lives. Her lightness; my earthiness. Her cleverness; my simplicity. But things had changed. Now I thought she was acting willfully ignorant. The military was stationed in Hamdeok. Refugees lived in the school yard. People had been killed there. Her husband’s position probably protected her, but that shouldn’t have made her blind to the realities. Still, I didn’t argue with her. I wanted to see her as my friend and not as her husband’s wife.

We entered the courtyard before my home. She set down her water jar and basket, slipped off her shoes, and entered the house. Min-lee and I followed wordlessly behind her. Jun-bu held Kyung-soo. Mi-ja rushed forward, her arms outstretched. “Let me see him.” I sensed my husband’s hesitancy. The last time we’d all been together hadn’t ended well between him and Sang-mun, but then the moment passed and Jun-bu allowed Mi-ja to take the baby. I suggested again that Jun-bu walk her home, but she waved off the idea. All this took only seconds.

“Then I’ll go to the school,” my husband said. To me, he added, “Our sons are dressed and fed. Granny Cho will be here shortly. I’ll come back at lunch.” With that, he ducked out the door.

Mi-ja, still holding Kyung-soo, glided across the floor to where Yu-ri was playing with a pile of shells and kissed her on the top of her head. My sister-in-law didn’t react, but that was expected. Mi-ja set Kyung-soo on the floor, and in a series of swift movements, she pulled a scarf from her pocket, untied the one that covered Yu-ri’s hair, and replaced it with the new one.

“My husband bought this for me,” she said. “But from the moment I saw it, I knew it could only be for you. And see? The green and purple pattern looks pretty next to your face.”

Yu-ri drew her hand up under her chin to show her pleasure. Next, Mi-ja peered around the room. I couldn’t tell if she liked it or not, and she didn’t give me a chance to ask, because her eyes came to rest on me. “You look thin,” she said, “and I’ve never seen you so pale.”

I was not the kind of woman who sought the reassurances of a mirror, but my fingers went reflexively to my face. Now that I thought about it, I was paler than Mi-ja.

“You’re the mother of three children,” she chastised me. “You need to be strong for them. Every mother gives the best morsels to her young, but you need to eat too.”

I honestly couldn’t say if I was hurt because she didn’t have sympathy for me or stunned because her life had so changed that she didn’t recall the desperation of an empty stomach. “On the day we met—”

Ignoring me, she pointed in the direction of the sea. “Your wet fields are right there. Let’s dive.”

“Maybe you don’t know that the haenyeo have been forbidden—”

She held up her hands in the same innocent gesture she’d used in Vladivostok when we got in trouble. “We aren’t diving as haenyeo,” she explained to the invisible person who might catch us. “We’re just two friends swimming together.”

“In January?” I asked, dubious.

She smiled in return. I decided to trust her.

By the time Granny Cho arrived, Mi-ja and I had already changed into clothes we could wear into the sea. Not water clothes, which would mark us as haenyeo, but mere undergarments for me and an old sleeping shirt for Mi-ja. Over these, we wore our day clothes. We were so intent on looking innocent as we strolled toward the shore that we barely paid attention to the procession of elders carrying the two dead soldiers on their stretchers in the direction of Hamdeok. We simply pressed our backs against the rocky wall of the olle and pretended to whisper to each other, as friends do.

We didn’t dare enter the bulteok. Instead, in plain view, we stripped off our outer clothes and walked hand in hand into the shallows. We didn’t wear our small-eyed goggles, which might also telegraph our intentions. If a villager saw us, he or she might think it strange that we would swim in the frigid water—for fun—at this time of year, but that person might also see two friends who’d enjoyed the sea together since childhood. If a soldier decided to make a fuss, I planned to share what we’d harvested with him.

Since haenyeo had not been allowed to dive, the area just offshore was extra-rich with top shell and conch. These we snatched up and put into small nets. We were not greedy. We could not look greedy if we were caught. We were breaking a rule as tightly enforced as the curfew, but under the sea I felt that what I was doing was completely right. This was my world. How could I have let anyone tell me I could not visit it to feed my children? Beside me, I had Mi-ja, who gave me added courage.

Around 11:00, after we’d gathered enough ingredients to make a porridge flavored with sea urchin roe and a stew of top shell and dried sweet potatoes, Mi-ja and I swam back to shore and quickly put on our clothes. We stuffed our nets into our baskets and covered them with pieces of cloth. We were hiding what we’d done but only in a minimal way, sure that any deliberate tricks or ploys would make us seem guiltier if someone stopped us to investigate. As we walked back toward my house, we saw people going about their daily lives with cautious peacefulness. Most of the men had gathered under the village tree, with the smallest children and babies in their care, yet I spotted none of the elders who’d taken the bodies to Hamdeok. Girls, many with younger brothers or sisters strapped to their backs, ran errands for their mothers. We saw women our age and older, bundled up against the cold and sitting on their front steps, doing what haenyeo who are not permitted to dive do—mending nets, sharpening knives and spears, repairing tears in their water clothes or sewing new ones for their daughters. Everyone wanted to be ready when the diving ban was lifted.

The quiet was shattered—without a single shout or rumble of warning—by the sounds of trucks, gunfire, and running footsteps. Instant chaos. It was as if demon gods had descended on us all at once and from all sides. Fathers snatched up babies and toddlers. Brothers grabbed their siblings’ hands. Women, who’d been at home, bolted into the olles, searching for their children, grandchildren, and husbands. Mi-ja and I ran too. I had to get home to my children and Yu-ri. Mi-ja stayed at my side. We couldn’t be separated. I needed her, but, being away from home, she needed me even more. She was a stranger in Bukchon. No one would take her in if we got separated, because, for all they knew, she could be an insurgent or a spy.

I smelled smoke and heard the crackle of fire before I saw it. When we darted around a corner, burning balls careened toward us. They were rats on fire! Behind them, flames shot up from thatch roofs, with several houses already engulfed. Men in uniforms and carrying torches jogged from house to house, igniting more roofs.

“Come! There’s another way!” I shouted.

We turned and sprinted back the way we’d come, pushing through those who were coming toward us. But soldiers were everywhere. We were quickly surrounded.

“Do not move!” one of them shouted at us.

“Do not run!” another yelled.

But my children! I looked frantically in every direction. I had to get home. Another dozen or so people ran into the same trap that had caught Mi-ja and me. Surely every one of us wanted to flee—out of a desire to live or to find our families—but with rifles pointed at us and flames heating our backs, we had to obey. If I was shot in this olle, I could not help my children, and I wouldn’t find my husband and my sister-in-law. The haenyeo in me was filled with righteous anger. I will survive for my family. I will protect my family.

The soldiers herded us like cattle, pushing us forward. Other soldiers with more captives flowed into our group.

Mi-ja held my upper arm in a fierce grip. “Where are they taking us?” she asked, her voice tremulous.

I had no answer. Mi-ja and I were in the middle of the pack. Bodies pressed against us on every side. We were funneled around another turn and came into the olle with the row of teachers’ houses, where I lived. I squeezed through the press of humans until I reached the edge. The gate to my courtyard was pulled open. Yu-ri’s tether lay limp and useless. The door to the house was ajar. It seemed like no one was there, but I shouted anyway. “Min-lee. Sung-soo. Granny Cho.” No answer. I hoped Granny Cho had taken the children to a secure place—whether to her own home or to the fields. But deep in my heart, I knew that wasn’t likely. I was sick with terror, but my blood felt like molten steel. I let myself be pulled back into the crowd.

“The school.” I did not recognize the voice that came out of me. “They’re taking us to the elementary school.”

“Jun-bu—” Mi-ja said.

“Maybe he already has the children.”

We were steered through the school’s main gates. Husbands, brothers, and fathers were separated and pushed to the left. Many of them still carried babies and small children in their arms. The rest of us, including old men, were shunted to the right. At the point of separation, the ten Bukchon elders, who’d taken the two dead soldiers to Hamdeok in an attempt to avert reprisals, were stretched out like seaweed to dry on the playground. They’d each been shot in the head.

“Keep moving! Keep moving!” soldiers yelled at us.

My limbs bumped into those ahead of me. I was shoved from behind. Mi-ja clung to my arm. There was comfort in having her with me. At the same time, I fought the urge to shake her off. I had to find my children.

I rose on my tiptoes, hoping to see Jun-bu and the children, but the entire population of Bukchon seemed to be here. Having heard of whole villages being wiped out—burned to the ground, all inhabitants killed—I was terrified, thinking what the soldiers might do to us.

We came to an area with another group of soldiers, who had new orders for us. “Sit! Sit! Sit!”

In an undulating wave, we dropped to the ground. Around me people sobbed. Some prayed to goddesses. One old woman chanted a Buddhist sutra. Babies wailed. Older children cried for their mothers. The old men hung their heads. A few people, weak or sick, lay crumpled on the ground, too exhausted to move. Opposite us, across a barren stretch of dirt, sat the men and teenage boys of Bukchon. Above us, black crows circled. Their dinner was coming.

Soldiers stood with their legs spread to anchor themselves to the ground. Their weapons swung back and forth, roaming over us, searching for anyone who might try to bolt. Smoke clogged the air, making it hard to breathe. The whole village, except for the school, seemed to be on fire.

The screeching whine of a bullhorn cut across the school yard, and a man stepped forward. “I am the commander of the Second Regiment of the Third Battalion. If there are among you any family members of the police, the military, or those who work for us, please step forward. You will not be harmed.”

Mi-ja fell into this category. “Go,” I whispered.

“I won’t leave you,” she whispered back. “If I stay here, maybe I can help you. When Sang-mun comes, I’ll make him gather all of us. He’ll save us. I know just how to ask him.”

I bit my lip, torn. I doubted he would put himself forward to help me and my family. More important, I doubted Mi-ja had influence over him. But I tried to believe her.

The commander repeated his announcement, adding, “I promise you’ll be safely delivered to your families.” At that, a few people stood. Policemen and soldiers gathered their relatives and guided them away from whatever was going to happen to the rest of us. Once they were out of sight, the commander addressed us again. “We’re looking for the insurgents who killed two of my men in the early morning hours of this day.”

My family was asleep when that happened, as were probably all the other families.

“We’re also looking for those who’ve aided the enemy, and informants who’ve whispered of our movements.”

I’d done neither. But… More than a year ago, I’d left food in my fields to help that mother and her children who’d been pushed from their mountain home. I’d whispered gossip with members of the collective when we were still allowed to work and with my neighbors in recent months. And I’d heard my husband bitterly condemn what was happening around us.

“If you step forward now and confess, we will be more forgiving,” the commander shouted. “If you don’t step forward, then your family and friends will suffer.”

No one accepted the offer.

“Already we’ve gone to the villages surrounding Bukchon,” he went on. “We have rid Jeju of three hundred people, who claimed to be farmers.”

Rid had to mean killed. But again, no one volunteered.

“All right, then.” The commander motioned to the soldiers nearest to him. “Take any ten men you choose.”

The soldiers waded through the sea of fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons, who sat in the dirt across from us. As the soldiers made their choices, I followed them with my eyes, searching for Jun-bu. The first ten men—mostly in their teens and twenties—were escorted from the playground into the elementary school. On our side of the yard, the mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters of those men began to sob. All I could feel was relief that the soldiers hadn’t taken Jun-bu.

Soon enough, Jeju’s relentless wind carried screams to our ears as the men were tortured. I was frozen with fear. I prayed to Halmang Jacheongbi, the goddess of love, who is independent, determined, and unafraid of death, but the men were not returned to the yard. Another ten men were gathered and taken inside. Again, their womenfolk keened with grief, followed by wails of agony, then eerie silence.

I met Mi-ja’s eyes. I could not fathom what she was thinking.

“If I’m going to die here,” I announced, “then it’s going to be with my children.”

After the next group of men was taken inside, I began to scoot on my bottom through the crowd. Mi-ja came with me.

“Have you seen my children?” I asked those around me every few meters. “Have you seen Granny Cho?”

I was not the only one making inquiries.

During one of our hazardous ventures to the perimeter, we came close—too close—to an ambulance. The back doors were open, and we could hear men inside arguing.

“I fear we’re going to need to kill everyone here,” rasped a man.

“That’s impossible.” I recognized the commander’s voice and felt a shard of hope. Then he went on. “But if we let them live, how will we provide their necessities—clothes, food, and housing—after burning everything?”

“And we can’t have witnesses.”

“But it’s—what?—a thousand people,” the commander asked.

“Not that many, sir. Only a few hundred…”

Just then, the ambulance driver opened his door, lurched to the edge of the yard, and vomited. A moment later, the commander and his officers poured out the back of the ambulance. As they strode away in V formation, Mi-ja and I scooted back into the crowd. We didn’t tell people what was coming. Panic wouldn’t help.

I’d been reduced to an animal wanting to protect its young, acting from instinct as old as the earth. Mi-ja and I approached the front of the gathering, going to the one area we’d most feared. We were getting close to the soldiers with their weapons when Mi-ja choked out in a half whisper, half cry, “Look!”

A few meters ahead of us, through the heads of about a dozen people, I saw Granny Cho and Yu-ri. My daughter, Min-lee, sat safely tucked between them. Yu-ri held Sung-soo, my eldest son, in her lap, while their little brother, Kyung-soo, was asleep on Granny Cho’s shoulder. Relief swept through me. My three children were safe. Now all I had to do was make my way to them without attracting attention. And then find my husband.

Mi-ja and I had almost reached them when the commander marched once again to the open space between the two groups.

“We take your men, but you don’t care. Let us see what happens when we ask questions of one of your daughters.”

He reached out and grabbed the closest person who met his requirements. It was Yu-ri. Sung-soo fell from her lap, stood, and was about to run when Granny Cho grabbed the tail of his tunic and held him back.

Someone shouted, “That girl is dumb! She won’t be able to help you!”

I buried my face in my hands, realizing the voice belonged to my husband. He was alive, and he was here.

“Who said that?” the commander demanded. “Who knows this girl? Step forward now! Give your life for hers.”

“No,” I wailed.

Yu-ri groveled on the ground, terrified. When the commander flicked his wrist and several men strode to her, my husband did the only thing he could. He rose to his feet.

“That girl is my sister. She does not speak. She will not be able to help you.”

The commander turned to my husband, his eyes gleaming. “And who are you?”

“I am Yang Jun-bu. I am a teacher in this school.”

“Ah! A teacher. The worst of the instigators.”

“I am not an instigator.”

“Let’s see what your sister has to say about that.”

The soldiers moved on Yu-ri and began ripping at her clothes. They did not have torture in mind. My husband tried to run forward, but the strong arms of our neighbors held him back, pulling on his legs from where they sat. He screamed in anger. I used the distraction to rise to a crouch and go the final distance to Granny Cho and my children. I swooped my daughter into my lap. I felt Mi-ja drop down next to me. My eyes shot between Yu-ri, my husband, and the commander.

Goddess, any goddess, help us. My sister-in-law was in the hands of the soldiers. I couldn’t allow my brain to consider what they might do to my husband, when, seemingly out of nowhere, Mi-ja’s husband came running across the yard.

“Commander! Commander!”

Sang-mun carried Yo-chan, dressed to visit his grandparents in a sailor suit.

Sang-mun frantically gestured to the commander. He knew Jun-bu, but he seemed unaware that my husband was right there.

“My wife is here. Let me find her!” he implored. “She’s in the protected category!”

He said not a word about Jun-bu. Inside I was sending a message: Look!

In my lap, my daughter struggled, wanting to run to Yo-chan.

“Mi-ja!” Sang-mun shouted. “Come!”

I grabbed Mi-ja’s arm. “Take my children.”

“I can’t,” she said without a moment’s hesitation.

Those two words felt like a knife turning in my belly.

“You must.”

“They know I have only one child. And Yo-chan is already with his father.”

“These are my babies—”

“I can’t.”

“They’re going to kill us. Please,” I begged. “Take them.”

“Maybe I can take one…”

But what was she thinking? Earlier she’d said she could help us. Taking one child was not helping us!

“Mi-ja!” Sang-mun yelled again.

She hunched her shoulders like a beaten dog.

Before us, Yu-ri had been stripped naked. My sister-in-law, who’d never hurt a soul and didn’t understand what was happening, scrambled to her knees. A soldier kicked her down.

“One,” Mi-ja repeated. “You will need to choose.”

My insides were being ripped apart. Rage and disappointment in Mi-ja. Hope that somehow she’d still be able to help us. And desperation, because how could I possibly make the decision she was demanding of me? Save my daughter, who would one day join me in the sea? Save Sung-soo, my oldest son, who would be able to provide for all of us when we reached the Afterworld? Save Kyung-soo, who was his father’s favorite?

“It has to be Sung-soo,” I said, “for the rest of us will die here today. Take him. Make sure he performs ancestor worship for us in the years to come.”

Next to me, Min-lee whimpered. She was old enough to understand I hadn’t chosen her. I would need to comfort her during our final moments together, but before I could begin, Mi-ja said something that soured my blood.

“I’ll need to speak to Sang-mun first and see if he agrees.”

Speak to him first? See if he agrees?

“I have to protect my son, too, you know” was the last thing she said to me before rising. Rifles and pistols swung in her direction. The movement caught Sang-mun’s attention, and he pointed Mi-ja out to the commander, who again flicked his wrist, this time allowing her to pass. Everyone watched as she walked, her beautiful gait slowed even more by terror. With attention momentarily focused on Mi-ja, my husband broke away from the arms that held him and rushed toward his sister. The soldiers seized him, using their strength to subdue his struggles. Behind them by just two meters, Mi-ja whispered into her husband’s ear. I watched and waited.

“You want to mount her instead?” the commander asked Jun-bu.

The soldiers now shoved Jun-bu forward. I wanted to cry out, but I had to protect my children too. I looked toward Mi-ja. Sang-mun seemed puzzled, just now taking in what was happening. And what was Mi-ja doing, taking her son into her arms when she should have been pleading mercy for my family?

“People can be made to do all sorts of things,” the commander said.

“Perhaps,” my husband said, his voice as thin as thread. “But I will not.”

I tried to cover my daughter’s eyes, but I wasn’t fast enough. Another flick of the wrist from the commander, and a soldier lifted and shot his pistol. My husband’s head split apart like a melon being broken open with a rock.

And then everything, again, seemed to happen at once. My husband toppled. Sang-mun put his palm to his forehead as he realized what had happened. Granny Cho must have loosened her grip, because Sung-soo suddenly broke loose and ran toward his father. Another shot rang out. Dust skipped up at my son’s heels.

“Don’t waste the bullets,” the commander shouted. “You’ll need them later.”

So that soldier picked up my boy by an ankle. Sung-soo fought and kicked, until the soldier grabbed hold of his other ankle. Then that man swung my son back like he was going to throw a net into the sea, only it was my son who sailed through the air until his little body came up against the wall of the school. He went completely limp. The soldier lifted what I already knew was deadweight and repeated the action three more times.

Sang-mun grabbed Mi-ja’s arm and began to walk away.

“Mi-ja!” I screamed. “Help us!”

She kept her face turned, so she didn’t see what happened when the soldiers decided to stop wasting their time with Yu-ri. She had not been able to speak for all these years, but she screamed when they cut off her breasts. Her agony was my agony. Then she stopped screaming.

Within a matter of seconds, I lost my husband, my son, and my sister-in-law, for whom I’d felt responsibility since my first dive as a haenyeo. And Mi-ja, my closest and oldest friend, had done nothing to help.

I stopped breathing, holding in air longer than could be possible, as if I were in the deepest part of the sea. When I couldn’t hold it any longer, I sucked in not the quick death of seawater but instead unforgiving, unrelenting, life-giving air.

And then the shooting began.

The Village of Widows

There are those who say no one survived the Bukchon massacre. Others say that only one person lived. Still others will tell you that four survived. Or you’ll see accounts that say 300 people died. Or maybe it was 350, or 480, or 1,000 people… Some will tell you about the group of one hundred or so survivors, who were herded to Hamdeok, where they ended up being “sacrificed.” So, yes, there were those who lived. One grandmother wrapped her grandson in a blanket and tossed him in a ditch. He crawled out under cover of darkness. Some families managed to live through the first night and escape past the wall that marked the ring of fire. And then there were the wives, parents, and children of police officers and soldiers, who were protected in the rice-hulling room until the massacre ended.

I will tell you this. More people died in Bukchon than in any other village during all the years of the 4.3 Incident. Those who survived the three days of torture and killing—whether in the school or in one of the small villages nearby—were forced to help deal with hundreds of bodies. Disposal—some might call it covering up the evidence—turned out to be a logistical problem. We dug a huge pit. Then we dragged the bodies of our neighbors and loved ones to the edge and dumped them in. Only after the soil was replaced were we released. We were told we were the lucky ones.

When I left the school yard with Min-lee and Kyung-soo, we joined a trail of people paralyzed by what we’d witnessed. We had nothing to return to, since every house in Bukchon had been burned, but the need for survival brought us together. We repaired tumbled stone walls. We gathered thatch to put roofs over our heads. In the meantime, we slept in tents provided by the American military. We scavenged through every burned-out house for any foodstuffs that might have survived the flames. We ate what we could of the pigs that had been roasted alive in their sties. I found a cabbage that hadn’t already been stolen. Since I didn’t have salt, I used ocean water and a few red chili flakes to make kimchee, soaking the mixture in a stone bowl for two nights and then putting it in earthenware jars. I did whatever I could to feed my children, even if that meant sneaking out at night to dive. And that was the only time I could be by myself, for Min-lee—knowing I was willing to give her up in favor of a brother—now stuck to me like an octopus on a rock.

No solace came from knowing I was not alone in my misery. So many men had been killed in Bukchon that it was now called the Village of Widows. I was filled with grief, but my mind raced like a rat trapped in a cage. That rat for me was Mi-ja, and she skittered and scratched back and forth inside my skull. Rightly or wrongly, I held her responsible for what had happened to my family. If she’d stepped forward when we were first herded into the yard, then she could have spoken directly to the people in charge, as the wife of someone who worked with them. Or she could have waited until her husband came and approached him thoughtfully and with purpose. Instead, everything she’d done was to protect herself. And maybe her son and husband, although I could not bring myself to believe they had at any point needed help. What I’d witnessed was the daughter of a Japanese collaborator safeguarding herself first and foremost.

I burned with the knowledge that I’d always known this fact about her but had not given it enough weight. You aren’t aware your clothes are getting wet in the rain. Day by day, year by year, I’d been deceived by Mi-ja. Now I could see as clearly as the fires that incinerated more villages on the slopes of Mount Halla that Mi-ja’s sacrificial act all those years ago to save my mother when the Japanese soldiers came to our dry field was motivated solely by self-preservation. After that, Mother had made sure Mi-ja was fed. She’d given Mi-ja a job. She’d allowed Mi-ja to become a haenyeo in her collective. Most important, Mi-ja’s behavior that day in the fields blinded me to the truth about her. I’d seen only what I wanted to see, when what she’d done was designed to benefit her alone.

If there were moments that my mind fought with itself—telling me I must have read her actions and heard her words incorrectly—her absence from my life reminded me every day that I had to be right. If she were innocent, she would have come to see how I was, brought food for the children, or held me in her arms as I cried. She did none of those things. I considered that Sang-mun had been at fault, having more power over her than I imagined. Maybe he’d seen Jun-bu and had chosen to do nothing. Maybe he’d whispered to the commander to murder Jun-bu. Maybe he’d nudged the soldier to kill my little boy. But none of that had happened, which left my soul feeling as though it were drowning in a vat of vinegar.

My grief over the loss of my husband, son, sister-in-law, Granny Cho, and many neighbors and friends was so deep and so terrible that when the black water clothes time of month didn’t arrive, I paid no heed. The next month, when it didn’t come again, I blamed it on the tragedy and not enough food. When I missed my third month, my dark pit of mourning wouldn’t allow me to acknowledge my aching breasts, my deep fatigue, and the terrible nausea that came every time I thought of my husband’s head exploding, my son being bashed against the wall, or Yu-ri’s howls of terror and pain. The following month—and we were still living like animals—I understood at last that my husband had planted a baby inside me before he died.

At night, when I couldn’t shut my eyes for fear of what I’d see on the backs of my lids, I thought of my husband in the Afterworld. Did he know that he’d given me another baby? Was there a way he could protect us? Or would it be better if the thing growing inside me—traumatized by the anguish I’d experienced—was squeezed out of me before it could breathe the bitter and dangerous air of the pitiless world? I was exhausted—from the growing baby, from not sleeping, from living in dread that teams from the military, police, Northwest Young Men’s Association, or rebels would come again. I couldn’t let my baby be born in the Village of Widows. For days I mulled over what to do. Grandmother Seolmundae offered many places to hide—caves, lava tubes, the cones of the oreum—but all of them were inside the ring of fire. If we were seen, we would be shot—or worse, I now knew—on the spot. My only hope—and it was a huge risk—was to try to make it back to Hado.

I gathered what food and water I could carry. Beyond that and my two children, I didn’t have anything to pack. I didn’t say goodbye to anyone. I slipped out in the darkest part of night and creeped barefoot through the village, with food and water strapped to my back, Kyung-soo tied to my breast, and holding Min-lee’s hand. I’d stuffed her mouth with straw and tied it shut with a rag so she couldn’t make a sound until we were safely out of the village. We walked all night, skirting refugee encampments with their foul odors and pathetic cries. We slept during the day, curled together in the shadow of a rock wall surrounding an abandoned field. As soon as darkness fell, we started again, staying far off the dirt road that circumnavigated the island, hugging the shore, and avoiding anything that warned of human habitation—houses, oil lamps, or open fires. My entire body ached. Kyung-soo slept on my chest, but I now carried Min-lee on my hip in addition to the strain of the pack on my back.

Just when I felt I couldn’t go another step, the outline of Hado came into view. Suddenly, my feet flew across stones. I longed to find my father and brother, but my duty was to go straight to my mother-in-law’s home. I ducked into the courtyard between the little and big houses.

“Who’s there?” came a quavering voice.

I’d lived through so much, yet it hadn’t occurred to me that Do-saeng, one of the strongest women I would ever know, could be so cowed by fear.

“It’s Young-sook,” I whispered.

The front door slowly opened. A hand reached out and pulled me inside. Without the aid of glittering light from the stars, I was unbalanced, waiting for my eyes to adjust. Do-saeng’s rough palm stayed closed over my wrist. “Jun-bu? Yu-ri?”

I couldn’t bring myself to say the words, but my silence told my mother-in-law the answers. She choked back a sob, and in the darkness I felt her fight her body’s impulse to collapse in anguish. She reached up, touched my face, and ran her hands down my body, before caressing Min-lee—her hair, her sturdy little legs, and her size. Then she felt the baby on my chest. When her hands didn’t find a little boy, she learned that I’d lost a son too. We stood together like that, two women bound by the deepest sorrow, tears running down our faces, afraid to make a sound in case someone might hear us.

Even with the door and side wall used for ventilation pulled shut, we moved like a pair of ghosts. Do-saeng unfolded a sleeping mat. I lay Min-lee down first, then unwrapped Kyung-soo. With that, the cold air bit through the front of my tunic and pants, which had been soaked through with his urine. Do-saeng undressed me like I was a small child and wiped down my breasts and stomach with a wet cloth. Her hand paused for a moment on my lower belly, where Jun-bu’s child was just beginning to make his or her presence known. No words could express the grief and hopefulness that passed between my mother-in-law and me in that moment. Still feeling her way, she drew a shirt over my head and then whispered, “We’ll have time for talking later.”

I slept for hours. I was aware of things happening around me as dawn broke. Padding feet going in and out of the house. My mother-in-law prying Min-lee away from my side to take her to the latrine or perhaps to fetch water and firewood. Kyung-soo making a couple of squawks, and my being conscious enough to feel hands lift him from the sleeping mat and carry him to a distance far enough away that I would be neither terrified nor wakened. I heard men’s voices—low and worried—and knew they belonged to my father and brother.

When my eyes finally blinked open hours upon hours later, I saw Do-saeng sitting cross-legged about a meter away from me. Kyung-soo was crawling nearby, exploring. Min-lee was setting pairs of chopsticks on the rims of bowls that had been put on the floor. The room smelled of steaming millet and the tanginess of well-fermented kimchee.

“You woke up!” I heard in my daughter’s voice the fear that I might leave her or give her up. The poor child helped me to a sitting position and handed me one of the bowls. The food smelled delicious—giving off the fragrance of home and safety—but my stomach lurched and twisted.

“After the bombing of Hiroshima,” my mother-in-law said, unprompted, “I couldn’t accept what had happened. I didn’t have my monthly bleeding for six months, but my husband hadn’t blessed me with another life to bring into the world. I finally had to acknowledge that he’d died alone, without me or any family to care for him. The worst part was wondering if he died immediately or if he suffered. Like you, I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep—”

“I thank you for your worry.”

Do-saeng smiled at me sadly. “Fall down eight times, stand up nine. For me, this saying is less about the dead paving the way for future generations than it is for the women of Jeju. We suffer and suffer and suffer, but we also keep getting up. We keep living. You would not be here if you weren’t brave. Now you need to be braver still.”

This was her way of telling me that even though nothing had yet happened in Hado, terror could be visited upon this place, whether by the insurgents, the police, or the military.

My mother-in-law continued in a gentle tone. “Young-sook, you need to look forward. You need to eat. You need to help the baby inside you grow. You need to live and thrive. You need to do these things for your children.” She hesitated for a moment. Then, “And you need to start preparing in earnest to be the next chief of the collective.”

There was a time when I would have wished this above all else. Now, not only was my desire gone but the idea seemed an impossibility. “Chief of the collective? Even if we were allowed to dive, I couldn’t do it. I’m not strong enough.”

“When the string breaks while working, there is still the rope. When the oars wear out, there is still the tree,” she recited. “You feel you can’t go on, but you will.” She waited for me to respond. When I didn’t, she went on. “Have you never wondered the real reason that I allowed you to go out for leaving-home water-work when you were barely married to my son? I wanted to increase the speed of your training to become chief. What if something happened to me?”

But this was opposite to everything I’d believed about her. “I thought you blamed me—”

“Once I would have wanted Yu-ri to become chief,” she said, speaking over me, “but we both know she did not have the judgment for it. On that day…” Even after all these years, it was hard for her to talk about what happened. “You showed courage, even though it was your first dive. Becoming a haenyeo chief is what your mother planned for you too. She was a good mother to you, and she trusted you. You have been a good mother to your children, but now you must be an even better and stronger mother. Children are hope and joy. On land, you will be a mother. In the sea, you can be a grieving widow. Your tears will be added to the oceans of salty tears that wash in great waves across our planet. This I know. If you try to live, you can live on well.”

I used to think mothers-in-law are difficult the world over, but on that day I came to understand that they’re simply unknowable. Their motives. The things they say. Who they choose for their sons or daughters to marry. Whether they share the way they make kimchee with you or not. But one thing was clear: for all the losses Do-saeng had suffered, which were at least equal to mine but perhaps far worse since she had no son left to care for her when she went to the Afterworld, she’d continued to live. Yet again I was faced with the most basic truth, the one that I’d learned when my mother died: when the end comes, it’s over. Plain and simple. There’s no turning back the clock, no way to make amends, no way, even, to say goodbye. But I also remembered how my grandmother had said, “Parents exist in children.” Jun-bu existed in our unborn baby, in all our children. I now had to follow my mother-in-law’s advice and draw strength from the things I’d learned, if only to protect this tiny bit of my husband I carried in my belly. I would live because I could not die.

When July came, the seas, wind, and air went hot and still. My pregnancy was now unmistakable. At six months, my belly ballooned out bigger than for any of my previous pregnancies, even though I had less to eat. And whatever I was lucky enough to put down my throat came right back up. The vomiting I should have had in the early months came full force in the final months and wouldn’t leave. It felt like I was on choppy seas but couldn’t get off the boat. Not ever. I threw up in the latrine, with the pigs fighting beneath me to get what fell from my mouth. I threw up in the olles when I fetched water or gathered dung for the fire. I threw up outside our neighbors’ houses and in their houses. And still my stomach grew.

“Perhaps this is because you can’t go in the sea,” my mother-in-law speculated. It was true. I was too awkward to sneak out at night, scurry across the rocks, let alone lug a net heavy with harvest on my back, which meant I could find no refreshing chill of the water, no buoyancy, no quiet.

My father and brother laughed whenever they saw me, and they tried to revive my spirits by gently teasing me. Our neighbors offered home remedies to relieve my discomfort. Kang Gu-ja said I should eat more kimchee; Kang Gu-sun said I should avoid kimchee. One said I should sleep on my left side; the other said I should sleep on my right side. I tried all but one suggestion.

“You need to get married again,” Gu-sun said. “You need a man to stir the pot.”

“But who would want to marry me and stir my pot filled with another man’s child?” I asked, going along with the idea even though I would never do it.

“You could become a little wife—”

“Never!” Jeju, which had never had enough men, now had far fewer. There had to be many women like me—widowed, with children, particularly from the mid-mountain areas—who would need a man to give them security, but not me. “I’m a haenyeo. I can take care of myself and my children. A time will come when I’ll be able to dive again.”

Beyond all that, I’d loved Jun-bu. He wasn’t as replaceable as a broken diving tool. No, I could never become a wife or a little wife.

Anyway, I had a different theory for why I was so big. My muscles, which had always been so strong, had been stretched beyond their limit by what I’d experienced and by what was still happening around me. Since the first of the year, dozens of villages had been burned to the ground, and more of the population had been killed. Among them were many innocents. I felt like I carried all of them inside me. My mother-in-law and I made spirit tablets for Yu-ri, Jun-bu, and Sung-soo, and we bowed to them every day and made offerings, but nothing soothed my discomforts. My back and legs ached constantly. My feet, ankles, face, and fingers swelled. I couldn’t get comfortable on my sleeping mat. In fact, it was hard for me to get up from and down onto the floor. Min-lee complained that I would no longer pick her up. I felt damp and sweaty in every crevice. My tears, for the most part, had dried, but there were times I still thought about dying. I could swim out across the path of moon shadows late at night until I wouldn’t have the strength to return to shore. I could drink poison, throw myself in the well, or slice open my wrists with my diving knife. I so much wanted to find peace.

In August, the weather changed as winds stirred on the East China Sea and raced unobstructed across the waters until they smacked into Jeju, telling us a typhoon was coming. Do-saeng promised we’d be safe. She said that her husband’s great-grandfather had built these houses and that they’d withstood every typhoon that had passed over the island. Still, I was frightened and longed to move inland to my family home. The typhoon that hit us wasn’t the worst we’d ever experienced, but we were all so much weaker in our bodies and minds that the impact was just one more remorseless blow. Lashing winds and savage gusts whipped the island. Massive waves roiled over the shore and into houses. Violent rain came in horizontally. Boats were smashed on the rocks. Those few families that had crops saw them drowned or washed away. Once the rain stopped, the churning seas settled, and the sun came out, I saw that Do-saeng was right. Many people had lost their homes or had their roofs ripped off, and a wall of the bulteok had collapsed, but we were unscathed. I helped my neighbors gather the stones from fallen walls and cut thatch for their roofs. All the members of the collective worked together to rebuild our bulteok, bathing enclosures, and the stone wall that created the pool in the shallows we used for catching anchovies.

We received yet another setback in September, when insurgents entered Hado and burned the elementary school. Fortunately, it happened at night and no kids were there. At the beginning of October, the hillsides climbing Grandmother Seolmundae went aflame not with another village being burned but with the fiery colors of the season. This was a reminder to us that whatever was happening between men would pass, and nature would endure with her cycles and beauty. People in Hado were still working hard, seeing what, if anything, they could plant for the winter months, and mending nets and other sea tools in hopes that the haenyeo would be allowed back in the water at some point. This was not a display of optimism. We were just trying to stay alive.

There came a day when I noticed that Do-saeng was being unusually quiet. No joking. No bossing. No nothing. I told myself she was unused to having small children in her life, and their laughter, crying, and demanding ways were heartbreaking reminders of the son and daughter she’d lost. My father and brother came to help me with the children. Only instead of taking them to the village tree, as they once did, they played with them in the courtyard. They said they wanted to keep the family close in case the Ninth Regiment should arrive. When my brother, father, or Do-saeng offered to fetch water from the well, I agreed. What could an immensely pregnant woman—who had about as much swiftness in her as a stranded whale—do to protect herself if military men or insurgents decided they wanted to rape or kill her? For the first time in my life I let others take care of me. Then one day it all became clear.

I was in my ninth month and home alone. My mother-in-law had gone to the five-day market in Sehwa to see what staples she could buy. My father and brother had taken the children to my old family home, so I could nap. But as soon as they left and silence fell over the house, my mind got itchy with images and memories. To distract myself, I swept the courtyard. Then I decided to wash the children’s clothes and let them dry in the sun. I tied their garments in a piece of cloth, grabbed the bucket, washboard, and soap, and carefully picked my way across the rocks to the shallow area enclosed by rocks where we could wash clothes and our bodies without being seen. Stepping inside was like entering a bulteok: I never knew who would be there, but I looked forward to hearing the gossip. This time, a lone woman sat in the water, naked, scrubbing an arm and humming to herself. I recognized who she was by the curve of her spine. My insides spasmed protectively around my baby.

“Mi-ja.”

Her back stiffened at the sound of my voice. Then she slowly tilted her head to the side to peer at me out of the corner of her eye. “You’re as big as everyone says.”

That’s what she had to say to me?

“What are you doing here?” I choked out.

“My son and I live here now.” After a long pause, she added, “In my aunt and uncle’s house. Our home in Hamdeok and my in-laws’ house in Jeju City were destroyed by the typhoon. My husband has gone to the mainland. He’s working in the government. I—”

A second spasm hit me with such ferocity that I doubled over. I dropped my bucket and the other things I’d brought and steadied myself by holding on to the rock wall.

“Are you all right?” Mi-ja asked. “Can I help you?”

She started to rise. Water ran down her breasts and legs. Her skin rippled with goosebumps. As she reached for her clothes, I turned and staggered out of there. Another spasm. I bent at the waist, barely able to walk. I saw Do-saeng standing outside the house, scanning the beach. When she saw me, she let her shopping bags fall and scuttled as fast as a crab over the rocks to me. She put her arm around my midsection and hurried me up to the house. Mi-ja did not follow us, but I was weeping with anger, sadness, and pain.

“How can she be here?”

“They say her husband’s house was destroyed in the typhoon,” Do-saeng answered, confirming what Mi-ja had just told me.

“But there are other places she could go.”

“Hado is her home, and her husband—”

“Was sent to the mainland,” I moaned, finishing for her. “Why didn’t you tell me she was here?”

“Your father, brother, and I thought it best. We wanted to protect you.”

“But how can she be here? How can anyone let her live here after what she did?”

Do-saeng set her lips in a grim streak. This was painful for her too.

Another contraction gripped me. I was sure the baby would slip out easily, since I’d never had problems giving birth in the past. I was wrong. This baby had been difficult from the first moment I knew of its presence. Did it not want to come out? Or did I not want it to come out? All I know is that the baby took three days to push its way into the world. I threw up the entire time. I cried. I screamed. I thought about all I’d lost. I felt hate for Mi-ja and love for my baby. I felt the loss of Jun-bu, my son, and Yu-ri even as I brought a new life into the world. At last, Do-saeng pulled the baby from between my legs and held it up for me to see. A girl. I named her Joon-lee.

Do-saeng recited the traditional words. “When a girl is born, there is a party,” but I was exhausted, my body ached, and I couldn’t stop weeping. Joon-lee, worn out from her three-day journey, was too sleepy to take my breast. I flicked my fingernail on the bottom of her foot. She blinked and then closed her eyes again.

Mi-ja came several times to the house, bringing gifts for the baby, packets of tea, and bags of tangerines—all such extravagances. I relied on Do-saeng, my father, and brother to turn her away:

“Young-sook is sleeping.”

“Young-sook is nursing the baby.”

“Young-sook is not here.”

Some of those excuses were real; others were not. If I was home, her voice insinuated itself through the cracks in the walls:

“Tell Young-sook I miss her.”

“Tell her I would love to hold her baby girl.”

“Tell her I’m happy that such goodness came from such tragedy.”

“Tell her I will be her friend forever.”

Sometimes I peeked out to watch her walk away. She’d returned to Hado with a limp, which I hadn’t seen that day in the bathing enclosure. I heard people speculate about how she’d come to have it and what a shame it was that she’d lost her lovely gait. I didn’t care. I told myself that whatever had happened to her she probably deserved. Otherwise, I managed to avoid her. She went to the well early; I had a baby, so Do-saeng took Min-lee to fetch water. Like all little girls, Min-lee ran through the village to do errands for me and began caring for her younger siblings. “In this way, you are learning to be a wife and mother but also an independent woman,” I told her. “You need confidence and self-respect to lead your own household one day.” But having Min-lee out and about was also a way for me to elude Mi-ja.

At night, after the baby was asleep, Do-saeng and I would go down to the bulteok to talk about the responsibilities that lay ahead for me. “You will sit where I am now,” she said. “You will need to listen deeply. You know how we praise Shaman Kim for her eye sensitivity and her ability to read a group’s mood? These characteristics you need to nurture in yourself.” She made me memorize breeding seasons for different sea creatures. She taught me new ways to tie knots and the importance of keeping the bulteok neat: “A haenyeo does not need mess around her,” she explained. “Too much clutter in the dry world has the ability to litter the mind when it needs to be clean and aware in the wet world.”

Many of these things I’d already absorbed without knowing it, but to have them planted so directly gave me purpose. Over time, she turned to advice on how to settle an argument, how to calm the natural jealousy and envy that arose when some divers were better than others, and how to stay alert to dangers that might affect the collective.

“You must keep track of the blood cycles for every woman. Sometimes a woman forgets that her time is coming, but you can whisper a reminder. Our local waters are usually safe, but a shark can smell blood from very far away. One shark, a collective can fight off. But a swarm of sharks…” She shook her head. Then, “One of the most difficult duties you will have is to tell a woman who has reached fifty-five that it is time for her to go home to her children and grandchildren.” When I pointed out that she was nearing that age, she said, “Exactly.”

Finally, the diving ban ended. Do-saeng and I returned to the bulteok, and my father and brother came to the house to care for the children. Mi-ja dove with the collective in her part of the village, which was the group she would have joined if my mother hadn’t taken her in. So much malevolence and fighting existed all around us that it came as no surprise that the different enclaves in Hado would take sides. The people of Gul-dong, the section of Hado where I lived, stood with me; the people of Sut-dong, where Mi-ja’s aunt and uncle had cared for her, now felt sorry for her. This, after all the years of thinking her the daughter of a Japanese collaborator. But these were the times we lived in, where villages, families, and friends were divided, and you couldn’t trust anyone. The women’s fishing grounds, which had always been assigned, were now ferociously guarded by the women of the two factions. The sea became a place of territorial battles, old resentments, and continued bitterness. Home became my refuge, the place where I could shut out problems and focus love on my children.

A year passed and the first anniversary of the massacre at Bukchon arrived. Kyung-soo, not quite two and a half years old, was far too young to hold ancestor worship for his father, aunt, and brother, but his grandfather and uncle helped him. Do-saeng and I cooked for days, and then removed ourselves so the men could have their ceremony. Father guided my son, and together they placed offerings before the three spirit tablets that represented Jun-bu, Yu-ri, and Sung-soo. Neighbors paid their respects, with much weeping.

In a separate ritual, the women in my family and collective went to the field where my mother was buried, since there were no graves for the other people I’d lost. Shaman Kim tapped me with her tassels. I hoped for messages from the dead that would calm my heart, but Jun-bu, Yu-ri, and Sung-soo remained silent. I was terribly disappointed. When the ceremony ended and I rose from my knees and turned to face my neighbors, I saw Mi-ja standing by the entrance to the field. Anger washed through me, flushing my face and constricting my breath. I suspected that her presence was why my loved ones had not sent messages. I walked straight to her.

“You have not allowed me to visit,” Mi-ja said as I neared. “You’ve never given me a chance to explain.”

“There’s nothing to explain. My husband is dead. My sister-in-law is dead. My firstborn son is dead.”

“I was there. I saw.” She shook her head as if trying to drive out the memories.

“So was I. You told me you had to protect your own family! You wouldn’t even take my children!”

Muted gasps rose up around us. Mi-ja turned red—whether in anger or in humiliation, I couldn’t tell. Then her body stiffened, and her eyes went cold.

“Every family on this island has suffered. You are not the only victim.”

“You were my friend. We were once closer than sisters.”

“What right do you have to accuse me of not saving your family?” she asked. “I’m only a woman—”

“And a haenyeo. You could have been strong. You could have—”

“I ask you again. Who are you to condemn me? Look at your own deeds. Why didn’t you stop Yu-ri from diving down again—”

I staggered back. This woman, whom I’d loved, and who had—through her own actions and inactions—destroyed my family, was using a secret I’d confided to her against me. And she wasn’t done.

“And what about your mother’s death? She was the best haenyeo. She went down with you and didn’t come back to the surface alive. Your kicking caused the abalone to clamp down on her bitchang. And you admitted you were inept with your knife—”

Do-saeng, who for so long I’d believed saw me in a bad light for all the things I was being accused of now, stepped forward. On either side of her were Gu-ja and Gu-sun. They made a powerful trio.

“This is a day of mourning for our family.” Do-saeng’s voice held the authority of a chief haenyeo. “Please, Mi-ja, leave our family alone.”

Mi-ja held still for a few long moments. Only her eyes moved, slowly passing over the faces of people she’d known from childhood. Then she turned, limped out of the field, and disappeared behind the rocky wall. I did not speak to her again for many years.

Big Eyes

Five months later, on June 25, 1950, the north invaded the south. We called this the 6.25 War. Three days later, Seoul fell. On Jeju, the police demanded that all radios be turned in. I did not want to give them the wedding gift I’d bought for my husband. I considered all the places to hide it. Maybe in the granary. Maybe in the pigsty or the latrine. But those ideas were tossed aside when I saw neighbors not only had their carefully hidden radios seized but were arrested and not heard from again. I turned in the radio, and another piece of my husband disappeared.

I didn’t know what was happening elsewhere in the country, but here on Jeju, in addition to the tens of thousands of refugees we had from the mountains still living in camps outside villages, we received more than a hundred thousand refugees from the mainland. Food became even scarcer. Human filth lay everywhere. Diseases spread. And more people were rounded up. Anyone suspected of being a communist—or having ever attended a meeting that might be considered leftist—plus their wives, husbands, brothers, sisters, parents, and grandparents—was detained. It was said over one thousand were now in custody on Jeju, including some from Hado. We never saw them again either.

Those who’d been held in custody since the beginning of the 4.3 Incident were sorted into groups and labeled A, B, C, or D, depending on how dangerous they were perceived to be. On August 30, Jeju’s police were instructed to execute by firing squad the people in the C and D categories. The only good news in all this was that most members of the Northwest Young Men’s Association joined the army to fight against the northern regime.

And still we haenyeo rowed, sang, and dove. When we’d first been allowed back into the sea, Do-saeng had paired me with a woman named Kim Yang-jin, who had married, as a widow, into our part of Hado. She was my age. She kept her hair cropped short. She had bowlegs, which gave her an amusing style of walking, but they didn’t seem to hinder her underwater.

“As I enter the sea, the Afterlife comes and goes,” Do-saeng trilled as we headed to the open waters. “I eat wind instead of rice. I accept the waves as my home.”

And we sang back to her. “Ill fate, I do have. Like a ghost underwater, diving in and diving out.”

“Here comes a strong surge,” Do-saeng called. “Let us ignore it and keep diving.”

“Our husbands at home, smoking and drinking, do not know our suffering. Our babies at home, crying for us, do not see our tears.”

Far to our right, we spotted a boat filled with haenyeo. First, we had to make sure they weren’t from Sut-dong and that Mi-ja wasn’t among them. Several women grabbed their spears, knives, or prying tools, holding them low and out of sight in case we had to fight for our territory. Once we saw they weren’t our rivals, we rowed closer. I didn’t recognize any of the women on the boat. I glanced at my mother-in-law. She was ready for a confrontation, if these were poachers, but also ready to exchange information, if they were friendly.

We pulled up our oars as we neared. The two vessels glided toward each other, rising and falling over the swells, until we were close enough that we had to use our oars as prods to keep the boats from crashing into each other. The chief of the other collective spoke first.

“We’re sorry if we’re trespassing into your wet fields,” she said. “We decided to row away from home for a few days. We didn’t want to be followed back to our families.”

“Where are you from?” Do-saeng asked.

“We live to the east of Jeju City, near the airport.”

They’d rowed more than thirty kilometers to get here. Something or someone had frightened them not just out of their territory but very far from home. The women on the boat, all physically strong, were clearly shaken. None would meet our eyes.

“What happened?” Do-saeng asked.

The other chief didn’t respond. Sound travels far across the water, and wind can carry voices even farther. I reached out and grabbed the tip of an oar from the other boat. The women holding that oar grabbed mine. A couple of other paired women did the same until we were close enough to hear low voices but not so close that we’d damage our boats. Now we could share information without fear that it would be heard by the wrong ears onshore.

“We saw them dumping bodies in the sea,” the chief’s gravelly voice rasped.

“In the sea?” Gu-ja, who was sitting at the back of the boat with her sister, blurted, too loud.

“So many men…” The chief shook her head.

Do-saeng asked a practical question. “Will they wash ashore?”

“I don’t think so. The tide was going out.”

Yet again, there’d be no proof of what had happened. But it also meant—and this was so disconcerting that my stomach flipped—the sea had become like our home latrines. Only instead of the cycle starting from our bottoms, going into pigs’ mouths, and then later our eating the meat from their bodies, which would later fall out of our bottoms, it was starting with our own people, who were even now being consumed by fish and other sea creatures, which we would harvest and eat.

“What have you heard?” the chief on the other boat asked.

My mother-in-law then revealed something that she hadn’t told me or the collective in the bulteok. “The haenyeo chief in Sehwa says that her cousin saw several hundred people shot near the airport. They’ve all been buried there.”

I began to shake. Why, why, why did my countrymen have to turn on each other? Wasn’t the ongoing 4.3 Incident enough? Now we had an invasion and bloody war. To me, it was multiples upon multiples of sorrows and tragedy for families on both sides. We, the survivors, were linked together in an intricate web of grief, pain, and guilt.

Do-saeng offered to let the women spend the night in our bulteok. “But in the morning, you’ll need to leave.”

Over the following months, I found myself making offerings to different goddesses every day. I counted the ways I was lucky. One, my son was too young to fight. Two, the war never came directly to Jeju. That was it—One and Two—because in every other way these continued to be sad times. Those who’d participated in the uprising on Jeju and had been moved to mainland prisons were executed in case North Korean troops pushed far enough south to free those prisoners to fight by their sides. And right here on Jeju, high on Grandmother Seolmundae, rebels were still holed up, making weaker and weaker raids, unable to recruit new followers or resupply. The police continued to search and destroy camps and kill whomever they suspected of being rebels, even if that included a farmer, his wife, and his children. What I’m saying is that killing happened on both sides here on Jeju and on the Korean mainland. Guilty and innocent died every day across our country. This had been happening for years now. Imagine that for a moment. Day after day. Month after month. Seeing and smelling death, while mothers still tried to feed, clothe, and comfort their children.

Six months into the war, Do-saeng turned fifty-five. Everyone in the bulteok knew what that meant, but I took on the responsibility of saying the words.

“My mother-in-law has led us for twelve years,” I said. “We have not had a single death or injury under the sea during her leadership. Now it is time for her to gather algae and seaweed and spend time with her grandchildren.”

“Let us have a vote to elect our new chief,” Kang Gu-sun proposed. “I nominate my older sister, Gu-ja.”

I did my best not to glance in Do-saeng’s direction. We’d earlier agreed that someone other than she should nominate me, and she’d been quietly working on my behalf, so this came as a surprise. A betrayal, even.

“Gu-ja has always lived in Hado,” Gu-sun went on. “My sister did not marry out or move away. Most important, she has not been touched by grief.”

Do-saeng asked for other nominations. None came. She called for a vote, and Gu-ja won unanimously. Every moment was colored by sadness for me in those days, but I think the other haenyeo took my subdued reaction for humility.

“I will always be here to help Gu-ja,” Do-saeng said. “The deep-sea fields are gone from me, and I’ll miss them.”

Later, when we returned home, Do-saeng handed me something wrapped in a piece of faded persimmon cloth. “I had hoped things would go differently today,” she confessed. “While it’s not the custom, I even bought you a present.”

I peeled back the folds of the cloth and found a piece of glass surrounded by black rubber with a strap hanging from the back.

“We’ve all suffered with our small-eyed goggles,” Do-saeng explained. “The metal rims press against our faces, and the sides limit our vision. This is something new. The Japanese call them big eyes. You’ll see better, and they’ll cause no pain. You may not be the chief, but you’re the first haenyeo on Jeju to have big eyes.”

I thought of Mi-ja then with anger and confusion, as I often did. I wondered how long it would be before she got big eyes too.

The next time we went to sea, the other haenyeo in the collective were impressed, crowding around to look at my mask. I put it on, jumped in the water, and headed down. Looking through my big eyes, I began to forget the things I’d seen and the people I’d lost. My mind cleared and steadied as I searched for abalone and sea urchins. In just these few seconds, I understood that this mask would also be a way for me to protect myself from feeling anything about the woman who had once been my friend or from letting my emotions escape, if only by accident.