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.