The Island of Sea Women

“Every woman who enters the sea carries a coffin on her back […] In this world, in the undersea world, we tow the burdens of a hard life. We are crossing between life and death every day.” 

Young-sook’s mother cautions her dive team about the ocean. Given the lyrical descriptions of marine beauty that the book contains, the characters all recognize the sea’s dangers as well as its glory. The tragedies that befall the haenyeo over the course of the story show what can happen to the unwary or the unlucky. 

“No one picks a friend for us; we come together by choice. We are not tied together through ceremony or the responsibility to create a son; we tie ourselves together through moments.” 

Young-sook’s comment about friendship will become prophetic by the end of the book. She and Mi-ja spend years capturing moments in their charcoal rubbings. It’s only when Young-sook sees these mementos again after an interval of decades that she reconnects to her friend emotionally. 

“As for Mi-ja, the way she’d stepped forward to protect my mother forever changed our friendship. From that day on, I believed I could trust her with my life. So did my mother.” 

Mi-ja takes a beating from Japanese soldiers in order to spare Young-sook’s mother. When this event happens, Young-sook sees it as an act of devotion. Once anger controls her thinking in later years, she reinterprets the gesture as a self-serving way for Mi-ja to ingratiate herself with the Kim family. Motivation can be good or evil, depending upon the interpretation of the witness. 

“I cursed myself. The suspicion that I was the cause of her death ate at me like lye. I was filled with misery and guilt.” 

Young-sook is convinced that she startled an abalone by splashing in the water. When it clamped its shell shut, her mother was trapped and drowned. Both Young-sook and Mi-ja take on guilt for situations over which they have no control. Mi-ja blames herself for killing her mother in childbirth. Both girls find ways to punish themselves for their self-perceived failures in the years to come. 

“Grandmother recited common sayings in hopes of comforting us two motherless girls. ‘The ocean is better than your natal mother,’ she said. ‘The sea is forever.’” 

Both Young-sook and Mi-ja have lost their mothers and take comfort in the ocean. However, the ocean is an ambivalent force. It is not always maternal in its dealings with the haenyeo. In fact, the ocean is what killed Young-sook’s mother. 

“You can love or hate the sea, but it will always be there. Forever. The sea has been the center of her life. It has nurtured her and stolen from her, but it has never left.” 

Young-sook makes this observation as an old woman. It offers a counterpoint to the preceding quote. After a lifetime of dealing with the sea, Young-sook is well aware of its dual nature. However, she accepts its ambivalence and takes comfort in its permanence just the same. 

“‘More important, if I marry out, we’d no longer be together,’ she said, pulling me even closer until nothing could separate us, not even a piece of paper. ‘We must stay together always.’ ‘Together always,’ I echoed.” 

As the girls speculate about their future husbands, they make this heartfelt vow to one another. Given what happens later in the story, the episode bears a grim irony. At the same time, it reveals a deeper truth. Even in hatred, the two are joined together always. 

“‘That poor girl was doomed to tragedy from the moment she sucked in her first breath,’ Grandmother went on. ‘You must pity her when you have such good fortune.’” 

Young-sook’s grandmother takes a deterministic view of Mi-ja’s life. What she fails to point out is that much of the tragedy Mi-ja suffers is because the other villagers, like Young-sook’s grandmother, are holding grudges from the past about collaborators. They are blaming her for the sins of her father and don’t want to get past their grievances.

“Air hissed through Mi-ja’s clenched teeth. ‘I’m a haenyeo, not some Confucian wife. My husband and his parents are unfamiliar with our ways. They believe, When a daughter, obey your father; when a wife, obey your husband; when a widow, obey your son.’” 

Mi-ja is pointing out a fundamental difference between the haenyeo and the rest of Korea. She quotes a well-known Confucian proverb that limits a woman to the status of an obedient servant for her entire life. The battle between goddess-centric shamanism and patriarchal Confucianism surfaces many times throughout the novel. 

“We thought we were free, but so far the only difference in our lives here on Jeju was that the Japanese flag was lowered, and the American flag was raised. One colonizer had been replaced by another.” 

Young-sook is looking back on the end of World War II from the vantage point of half a century later. This gives her the ability to see the repercussions of changes in power. No one involved in the partitioning of Korea could foresee that they were planting the seeds of a conflict that is still with us seventy-five years later. 

“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.”

The atrocities of the post-war era become personalized in the novel through the eyes of Young-sook. A student of history can read statistics about the conflict but never feels the visceral impact of these horrors until they affect a living person. The fact that all this violence is essentially being perpetrated by members of the same ethnic family is what makes the entire era so shocking. 

“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.” 

Young-sook points out the essential problem with the way matters were being handled by the government. As the paranoid fear of communism grew, every innocent action became politicized. Those who had no interest at all in politics found themselves to be its most frequent victims.

“We’d grown up with the Three Abundances, but we weren’t prepared for the Three-All Strategy—kill all, burn all, loot all—of the scorched-earth policy.” 

The government’s zeal to quell political dissent of all kinds led to draconian measures, which did little but harm the innocent. Young-sook’s comment hearkens back to the wry haenyeo proverb about the abundance of wind, stones, and women on Jeju. The people are used to a hard life, but they don’t expect to risk their lives on a daily basis. 

“I stopped breathing, holding in air longer than could be possible, as if I were in the deepest part of the sea. When I couldn’t hold it any longer, I sucked in not the quick death of seawater but instead unforgiving, unrelenting, life-giving air.” 

Young-sook has just witnessed her husband, son, and sister-in-law being slaughtered. Air is so critical to a diver’s survival that Young-sook’s instinct is to kill herself by breathing in seawater. Sadly, air is in plentiful supply at a time when she wishes it wasn’t. The breath of life becomes the breath of living death.

“Fall down eight times, stand up nine. For me, this saying is less about the dead paving the way for future generations than it is for the women of Jeju. We suffer and suffer and suffer, but we also keep getting up.” 

Young-sook’s mother-in-law counsels her to recover from her losses. The quoted proverb acknowledges the difficulty of the haenyeo life, but it also indicates the toughness and resilience of the women who choose a life in the sea. However, this time Young-sook needs to get up from the kind of emotional devastation that few people will ever know. 

“Since the first of the year, dozens of villages had been burned to the ground, and more of the population had been killed. Among them were many innocents. I felt like I carried all of them inside me.” 

The government continues its insane purges for months on end. This happens at a time when Young-sook is about to deliver her next child. The battle seems to be waged within her own body as she struggles to create life while the rest of her countrymen seem intent on creating nothing but death. 

“This woman, whom I’d loved, and who had—through her own actions and inactions—destroyed my family, was using a secret I’d confided to her against me. And she wasn’t done.” 

After Young-sook attacks Mi-ja for her betrayal, the latter brings up questionable actions from Young-sook’s own past. The attack is all the more bitter because Young-sook told these failings to Mi-ja in confidence. The latter is illustrating the principle that the people who can hurt us the worst are those who know us the best.

“Is there a way for us to find meaning in the losses we’ve suffered? Who can say that one soul has a heavier grievance than another? We were all victims. We need to forgive each other.” 

At the dedication of the peace park memorial, a speaker calls on the audience to forgive and forget past wrongs. The message falls on Young-sook’s deaf ears. She is far from ready to entertain the notion that Mi-ja suffered too. Yet, the speaker is correct. Both friends have been victims of the times. 

“Remember? Yes. Forgive? No. Young-sook can’t do that. Being allowed to speak the truth? Too, too long in coming.” 

This is Young-sook’s internal response to the speaker’s plea for forgiveness. She seems to be expressing a “too little, too late” sentiment. This provides a rationale to the reader for her motivation in refusing to read Mi-ja’s many letters. 

“So? In every village, victims live next door to traitors, police, soldiers, or collaborators. Now killers and the children of killers run the island. Is this so different from when you were a girl?” 

Do-saeng is pointing out to Young-sook that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Koreans once harbored equally bitter feelings toward the Japanese occupiers. Rather than take a hard line against traitors, as Young-sook’s grandmother did, Do-saeng is suggesting that it’s time to learn from the mistakes of the past. 

“I missed having her to blame. When that missing grew too strong, I walked to her house, where I touched her things and sensed her all around me. The house became the scab I could not stop picking.” 

Young-sook acknowledges her need to have Mi-ja around if only to stoke her anger. The tie between the two friends is as strong as ever. Ironically, it’s now being fueled by rage on Young-sook’s part even as she protests that she wants nothing more to do with Mi-ja.

“Deep roots remain tangled underground […] Yo-chan’s mother says that about the two of you, and I guess she’s right.” 

Young-sook’s daughter makes this observation about her mother’s irrational behavior. Young-sook repudiates Mi-ja yet goes to clean her abandoned house. When Mi-ja quotes the proverb, she is describing the tie between the two women. The roots aren’t entwined by affection. They are tangled by conflicted emotion. 

“It pained me to know I couldn’t change and I couldn’t forgive, but I had to hold on to my anger and bitterness as a way of honoring those I’d lost.” 

Young-sook is explaining her rage in a way that may not have been apparent to the reader, or even to herself. To let go of her anger could be interpreted as an act of disloyalty to her dead family. This could then precipitate a new round of guilt and self-blame for letting them go. Her reasons for holding on to her destructive impulses become more comprehensible when seen in this light.