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.