The most important and startling of the changes was that men now oversaw the Village Fishery Association. We still had our own collective and met in the bulteok, but the man told us who could work and for how long. He tried to control us—as other men did with every haenyeo collective around the island—so we felt less free to be ourselves or determine our futures. He even made us pay fines if we exceeded catch limits or harvested something in the wrong season. Fines! This I had managed to prevent as chief, so the women in my collective did not have to pay penalties. If you put it all together—men telling us what to do, daughters going to school and getting dry-land jobs, and, especially, rules forbidding more than one woman in a household to work as a haenyeo—no wonder there were fewer of us. Add to that what happened after President Park came to visit. He looked around our island and decided that it wasn’t practical to build factories here, but, since the weather was good, he declared that the only way to earn a living was by growing a type of tangerine called gamgyul. So people, including many haenyeo, started growing tangerines on the other side of the island. The first time Dr. Park came, there were about twenty-six thousand haenyeo on Jeju. When he came last year—to measure our tolerance to holding our hands in ice water—we’d dropped to eleven thousand haenyeo. Eleven thousand! He made me a bet that within another five years we’d lose another half to retirement.
The only good thing about the Village Fishery Association, as far as I was concerned, was that we could keep whatever we’d harvested beyond our “required quota.” These items I took to sell on the streets of Jeju City. The income had paid for my children’s educations and Min-lee’s wedding and would help me with the banquet and other festivities attached to the forthcoming marriage of Kyung-soo and a girl he’d met on the mainland during his mandatory military service. Soon I would have four generations living within the same fence: my mother-in-law, me, my son and daughter-in-law, and the children they would have.
“Hurry up now!” the man shouted. “Gather your gear!”
We did so, and then climbed onto the back of his truck. He drove us to the dock, where a large motorboat waited for us. Once we were aboard, the captain headed to sea, first dropping the small-divers in a cove and then steering through the churning waves to the deep sea. When we arrived, I took charge.
“Mind your tewaks,” I said. “Stay close to the boat. Come in when you get cold. And please watch out for each other.”
Life on land had changed, but the sea remained the same. A breath, a breath, a breath, then down… The water here was crystal clear to a great depth. Black volcanic rocks stood in contrast to the pearly sand. To my left, a forest of seaweed swayed as if blown by a gentle wind. As always, my above-sea concerns melted away when I began to concentrate, searching the rocks for creatures to put in my net, my senses heightened to watch for dangers.
Four hours later, we arrived back at shore and were returned to Hado, where a few men waited for the truck to pull to a stop. Husbands still spent the day in the village square, minding babies and toddlers, but they helped their wives in ways once unimaginable. We haenyeo are strong, and we had always done our own hauling. Since our men were unaccustomed to physical labor, it typically took two of them to carry what a haenyeo brought ashore. “When you accept our help,” the man in charge had explained, “you become more profitable.” Of course, I didn’t have a husband, and my son was on the mainland. Today, my net was so heavy with my harvest that I had to bend over so that my face was nearly parallel to the ground to bear the weight. The burden—the tangible, physical proof of my labors—felt like money, opportunity, and love.
We still weighed our catches together, but the man in charge oversaw sales and the distribution of monies earned from our sea harvests. Once that was done, we entered the bulteok, warmed by the fire, got dressed, and shared a meal. At least that man didn’t come inside. That would have been one insult too many.
“I hear Joon-lee’s coming home today,” Gu-ja said.
“For the summer,” I answered.
“Have her thoughts turned to marriage yet?” Gu-sun asked.
I put a hand on her shoulder, knowing how hard it had to be for her to ask questions that involved a daughter and the unfolding of her life. “You know how Joon-lee is,” I answered. “Her thoughts seem to be only on books. I’m lucky Min-lee has already given me twin grandsons.”
“Very lucky,” Gu-sun agreed. “Now you have the security of another generation of boys to provide for you in the Afterworld.”
We left the bulteok together but parted ways almost immediately. I headed to my home perched on the shore. Do-saeng, now sixty-nine, still lived in the little house, but I found her in the kitchen of the big house preparing Joon-lee’s welcome-home meal. A wall was stacked with earthenware jars, filled with homemade pickled radishes, sauces, and pastes. To me, those jars were like stacks of gold bars, representing how far I’d brought my family.
“Joon-lee has always liked pork sausage,” Do-saeng said. “I’ve sliced this thin, so each person can have several pieces.”
After so many years, I knew my mother-in-law very well, and she wasn’t speaking a pure truth. Having Joon-lee return home from her first year at university was a big occasion, and I’d agreed to slaughter one of our pigs. We’d use every part of the animal for the celebration tonight, but the sausage wasn’t for Joon-lee. It was for the twins. Do-saeng loved to spoil her great-grandsons.
“What else have you made?” I asked. “And how can I help?”
“I used pork bones, bracken, and spring onions to start the broth for the stew. You can stir in the powdered barley to thicken it, if you’d like. Just remember to—”
“Keep stirring to keep it from getting lumpy. I know.”
“Min-lee should be here soon. She’s promised to bring tilefish for us to grill. And you brought things from the sea too, I hope.”
“I have a basket of baby abalones to grill. This I know Joon-lee loves.”
“She is our greatest hope,” Do-saeng said with a smile.
But, aigo, for the past seven years I’d never had a day when I hadn’t missed her. When she was at the all-girls middle and high schools in Jeju City, I only got to see her on special occasions. She even stayed in the city for summer school. “I want to improve my chances of getting into a better college,” she’d often repeated on those few days she visited. I thought perhaps the city had twisted her mind to have such a big dream, because to me it was miraculous enough that she was going to her special private schools. I should have known better, because whenever she came to Hado, she showed no desire to join me in the sea. Instead, she wanted to visit the new Village Fishery Association! The government on the mainland had sent books to create small libraries for each association so that a haenyeo like me could “improve her level of literacy.” But I wasn’t literate to begin with, so this gift felt like another insult. Joon-lee, however, loved those books. She systematically read every one. When the time came, she did so well on the entrance exam that she won a scholarship to Seoul National University—the top school in the country. I was stunned and very proud. Her attitude about it was different.
“During the war, half the students went missing,” she’d said when she received the acceptance letter. “They were either killed in battle or moved to the north. Just like here on Jeju, the mainland has fewer men. They need girls like me to fill the slots.”
Her older sister said what I felt. “You worked hard for this. Don’t dismiss it by acting like you didn’t earn your spot.”
I couldn’t predict what would happen in the future, but even now twice as many boys as girls went to middle and high school. Competition would become ever fiercer as those boys moved forward, but I would make sure all my grandchildren would go to high school, and maybe even college or university, even if it meant their parents and I would be separated from them for most of the year. Sometimes you must experience heartache to have a treasured result.