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
March–December 1948
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.