“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.”