The Mermaid from Jeju by Sumi Hahn

Author:Sumi Hahn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CROOKED LANE BOOKS

Twenty-One

Junja’s grandmother kept her perch atop the narrow wooden seat by gripping its splintery sides. The motion of the cart on the uneven dirt road pained her, but she was grateful not to be walking. Suwol’s father was trying to explain the complicated history that had led to his son being secretly shadowed by his wife’s nephew.

Mr. Yang had grown up on the mountain with Kim Dal Sam, one of the alleged leaders of the Communist party on Jeju. A cabbage farmer’s son, Mr. Kim had been known for his precocious intelligence. A neighboring nobleman sponsored the young man, sending him to study in Seoul. There, Mr. Kim had met Constable Lee, in a noodle shop popular with students. The two of them became friends over an argument about which kind of meat made the best broth. Their paths had diverged until they unexpectedly crossed again on Jeju, this time on opposite sides of a simmering conflict that neither man had ever imagined would turn bloody.

“And yet blood has been spilled,” the old woman murmured, thinking of her daughter.

“It’s as if some kind of madness has seized the government in Seoul,” exclaimed Mr. Yang. “Jeju has always gone its own way. How does acting as we’ve always done turn us into Communist rebels?”

“You keep calling Kim Dal Sam a rebel leader.” The old woman was trying to make sense of this new information. “Is he a Communist after all?” If the man had attended university in Seoul, the idea was not as far-fetched as she had first thought.

“Kim Dal Sam is leading a group of starving peasants with pitchforks. He’s a thorn in the US military’s side, so they’ve labeled him a Chinese spy and Communist rebel. Now, he’s a legitimate target.”

How horribly familiar this sounded to the old woman. This was how the madness began, with lies that swallowed individuals before devouring an entire country. “It started like this with the Japanese. They showed up on our doorstep, ordering us around and demanding our allegiance. No one took them seriously at first—it was too outrageous.”

Mr. Yang thought of his father, who had served in the royal court and witnessed what happened there. “It’s a convenient excuse, to blame everything on the invaders. But the kingdom was corrupted from within.”

“Of course, it was. The royal court has always attracted the greedy and the unscrupulous. Many of the nobles were traitorous thieves who only cared about themselves and grabbing as much as they could. If the Japanese hadn’t been our ruin, then the Chinese would have been. Korea is now playing the bone again between two dogs, this time Russia and America.””

“Selfish brutes. We should have killed all the collaborators, every single one of them.”

The old woman had to disagree. Anyone who believed that violence could be justified had already succumbed to the madness of war. She remembered what it was like, emerging from that delirium, realizing what she had done when she killed those Japanese soldiers. “You would think a rabid beast like war can’t sneak up on you, but it does.

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