The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See

Author:Lisa See
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

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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.

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