Once in the sea, I pushed aside thoughts of dry land. By the time we returned to the bulteok a few hours later to eat and warm up, our worries about last night’s events had diminished. If we could go back to boasting about what we’d caught, then maybe others would shrug off the raids as well.
The U.S. colonel in charge was also dismissive. “I’m not interested in the cause of the uprising,” Colonel Brown told a reporter on the radio that night. “Two weeks will be enough to quash the revolt.” But he was wrong. This day, April 3—Sa-sam—came to be called the 4.3 Incident, although we did not yet know that this date would be so important in our lives.
Two days later, Jun-bu told me that the U.S. military government had created something called the Jeju Military Command. A more stringent curfew was set in place.
“But how am I supposed to stay in our home between sunrise and sunset, when water needs to be hauled, fuel gathered, and pigs cared for?” I asked my husband.
Jun-bu ran his hands through his hair. He had no solution.
On the radio, we heard the commander of the Ninth Regiment of the Korean Constabulary explain that he was trying to negotiate peace: “I’ve asked for the complete surrender of the rebels, but they’re demanding that the police be disarmed, all government officials be dismissed, paramilitary groups—like the Northwest Young Men’s Association—be sent away, and that the two Koreas be reunified.”
Naturally, neither side could agree to those conditions. After that, the constabulary brought in nearly a thousand men to strengthen their force on Jeju. Some of those men were sent to guard villages along the coast like Bukchon, Hado, and Hamdeok, for which, I’ll admit, I was grateful. Then—and all this we heard about either on the radio or through gossip—the constabulary climbed Mount Halla and attacked the rebels. By the end of April, Jeju City was completely cordoned off, and police were conducting house-to-house searches to weed out what they were calling communist sympathizers. But many people in the constabulary and the police were from Jeju. When they could no longer bear what was happening, they defected to the rebels in the mountains. We even had a few people leave Bukchon to join the renegades.
Major General Dean, the U.S. military governor now in charge of Korea, came to our island to “assess the situation.” He repeated a rumor that the North Korean Red Army had landed on Jeju and now commanded the rebels. This was followed by rumors about North Korean naval ships and a Soviet submarine circling the island. These false stories cemented a hard-line policy. Major General Dean sent another battalion to Jeju. And while the order was that the U.S. Army should not intervene, it kept track of Korean operations by using reconnaissance aircraft. When I worked in the dry fields, those planes passed overhead, hunting for their prey. At night, I saw cruisers out at sea using searchlights to scan the horizon. When I went to the five-day market, vegetable peddlers from the mid-mountain area told me they’d come across American officers riding in jeeps or on horseback on Korean-led missions. By the end of six weeks, four thousand people had been arrested.
At the beginning of the seventh week, Jun-bu invited the women from the collective who didn’t know how to read or write to our house to teach us how to vote. Even if the election was rigged, we wanted to take this opportunity to try to have a voice in our government. “You don’t have to recognize the written characters for the candidates’ names,” he explained. “All you need to know is where he comes on the ballot. Is he number one, two, or three? It’s your choice. Then you mark the number of the person you want.”
But when we went to the polling place, a group of men barred us from entering. “Turn around. Go home,” they told us.
Once again, my news came from the bulteok as the haenyeo jabbered like chickens the next morning. In Bukchon, we hadn’t been allowed to vote, but that was nothing compared to what had happened elsewhere.
“The police, the constabulary, and the Northwest Young Men’s Association blocked—”
“Jeju’s main road going east—”
“And west—”
“So rebels wouldn’t be able to pass.”
Not for the first time, Ki-young’s daughter, Yun-su, seemed to have a clearer sense of what had transpired. “None of that mattered,” she said, and I heard something like pride in her voice. “Nothing stopped the rebels. They raided polling places and burned ballot boxes. They kidnapped election officials. They cut more telephone lines—”
And then the others were off again.
“Destroyed bridges—”
“And blocked the very roads they weren’t supposed to pass.”
In the end, no votes were counted from Jeju, and the Americans’ choice, Rhee Syngman, was elected president, although we hadn’t yet officially become a country.
The next morning, when I returned to the bulteok, yesterday’s nervous twittering had been replaced by anxiety. Surely, the government would punish us for the troubles of election night.
“I’m chief of our collective,” Gi-won said, “but as a woman, I have no choice in what happens next.”
“No woman has a say.”
“No child has a say. And the elderly?”
“They have no authority either,” Gi-won answered for all of us.
Most of our fathers and husbands had spent their days thinking grand thoughts and taking care of babies, so they were powerless too. But everyone—even the innocent, even the young and the elderly, even those who did not have a husband to read the propaganda to them from the newspaper, or those, like Yu-ri, with no comprehension of what was happening—was forced to take a side.
* * *
In late May, Mi-ja arrived one day at my door. She was alone. She’d lost weight and her color was bad. I invited her in, but I couldn’t help being apprehensive. While I made citrus tea, she visited with Yu-ri. “Have you been good?” she asked. “I’ve missed you.” Yu-ri smiled, but she didn’t recognize Mi-ja.
“I’ve missed you too,” she said when I came with the tea.
“You stopped coming to the olle,” I replied.
“You could have visited me.”
“I have the children—”
“A girl this time?” She scooted toward the cradle, where Kyung-soo slept.
I held up a hand. “A boy.” As she slid back to her original spot, I finished my excuse. “The children and Yu-ri are too much for me to take to Hamdeok. It’s not easy—”
“Or safe.”
“Or safe most of all,” I agreed.
Silence hung between us. I couldn’t fathom what she wanted. She took a breath and let it out slowly. “Sang-mun planted a baby in me not long after the march. I was sick, so I couldn’t come to see you.”
A pang of guilt. Of course, there had to be a reason.
“A boy or a girl?” I asked.
She lowered her eyes. “A girl. She lived two days.”
“Aigo. I’m so sorry.”
She regarded me, hurt. “I needed you.”
Whatever caution I’d felt disappeared. I’d failed my deep-heart friend.
“Your husband,” I ventured. “Has he been good to you?”
“He was gentle when I was pregnant.” Before the true meaning of her words could sink in, she went on. “You can’t know how hard it is for him. He goes from meeting to meeting and from place to place all over the island. The Second Regiment’s Third Battalion is now stationed in Sehwa nearby, but they’re headquartered in Hamdeok. It’s a lot of pressure.”
“That must be difficult—”
She sighed and looked away. “Many people, when they envision being faced with hardship, believe they will fight back. But when I was a child and had to live with Aunt Lee-ok and Uncle Him-chan, I learned what really happens. They didn’t feed me, as you know. By the time I wanted to fight back, I was too weak.”
I struggled to find something to say to boost her spirits. “That terrible situation brought us together. For me, it will always be a happy result.”