Her grandmother was a “Haenyeo,” a group of freediving and fishing women in Jeju island, Korea. She, like other Jeju kids, grew up in the sea as fate, and raised in wide community of Haenyeo Samchun.
Samchun or Samchon usually means a parents’ brother or close male relatives, but in Jeju, all close neighbors, regardless of gender, are referred to as “Samchun.”
Novelist Hyun Ki-young’s <Uncle Suni (Suni Samchon)> is actually a narrative about tragic historical incidents of “Jeju 4.3,” but with a female protagonist, rather than a male relative.
Indeed, “Haenyeo” and “Jeju 4.3,”
these two are critical keywords for describing the Jeju of the past, yet also terrible aspects of contemporary scene.
These are also a point of contention for artist KOMI, a writer who serves as a reporter for a local newspaper in Jeju. She has also won numerous media prizes, both large and minor, for the topic of “Haenyeo” during the time of his 26-year career as a journalist.
There was an underlying pressure to be perfect.
KOMI is unsure when the seed began to grow in her mind. From the moment, more than a decade ago, when she agreed to end her mutually miserable marriage, or even before that.
As a journalist, she desired perfect performance, and as a mother, she expected proper child raising, that’s it. She didn’t believe it was quite that much “greed”.
“A single mom, female news reporter.”
When they claimed that it is a “objective” term to characterise KOMI socially, she hated the “subjective” preconceptions and imaginations that resulted.
Her little boy was smart. There was no one else to look after him except her own mother, so, she always complained him like a packed lunch. That little boy never blamed his busy mom. He also worked as a kid reporter, and won several literary awards. She smiled when told he “resembles” his mother.
With schools frequently opening and closing owing to the corona virus, the necessity and importance of schools and public education face a serious test.
The argument that it is vital to acquire social rules through physical contact, even if there is little to learn in the place immediately, and the counter that it is not necessary in contemporary society.
It was discovered that some children are unable to spend safe time during their patrons are vacant for works, and also some kids do not have a meal even per a day due to their severe poverty, if the schools are close.
Due to violence, prejudice, and bullying, it is becoming clear that there are a greater number of youngsters than predicted who are hesitant to attend school.
KOMI’s teenager son is one of those children who appeared to be capable of breathing outside school. His mother only wants to be normally well rounded for her son, sometimes can show his excellency in a certain part like writing, but he is eventually pushed out as a loner outside the prescribed boundaries.
‘Is it because his temper resembles me, or is my divorce hurts him?’
Corona 19 began to reveal the wounds of school violence of him that I had been attempting to conceal. Her concerns were excruciating.
Her son doesn’t fit for this system. She firstly pretended not to see it, then protested at her son’s schools, and conferred with her child. She did everything she could.
Finally, it was only recently that she decided to abandon everything about her son’s official education, to dutifully attend school, to enroll in college like everyone else, and to live a life that belongs to the system and follows the rules.
Her son is going to drop out of school by the graduation of his middle school. Just to the extent that the law requires all the youth.
Nothing more than else important, she should “rescue” her “abnormal” son.
It was terrible to think that while she was able to establish the Haenyeo’s history and heal the wounds of Jeju 4.3, she was powerless to relieve her own and her son’s pain.
She snatched up her thread and needle every time. While she was busily knitting, the outside of her window became bright, and items she was unaware she had manufactured continued to pile.
One day, she created something resembling a gorgeous shawl by weaving shimmering gold threads, but the threads kept ripping off and could not be utilised.
On the outside, she appears to be a newspaper editor-in-chief and a senior female journalist, but on the inside, she felt as though her life had been scorched.
Then, she rolled it over there and ripped some newspapers, a love-and-hate companion of her entire life.
When she realised what was created by assembling a large number of the torn bits, she realised they were beads. Perhaps they are “Sarira,” the Buddist priests’ human pearls remaining wish ashes after their death.
The Sarira that KOMI, who is turning to fifty years old next year, bore throughout her life, was covered in her failed golden shawl; they resembled bird eggs.
And a coiled yarn far away from her nest lonely, seems her wounded son.
“Soombisori, making sounds of breathing out of the deep water is one of the regulations of Jeju Haenyeo. It sounds like a whistle at first, but after holding your breath for an extended period of time in the deep water, then climb to the sea level and signal,
“I’m alive!”
No matter how densely packed the ocean is with pearl oysters, if you lose your breath and your mind while harvesting them,
will perish.
She and her son, painfully aware that now is the moment to take a deep breath, spit out this work in the form of a cry of “fee-b-be-bee,”
“Conceiving pearls…”
Without feeling compelled to pull and renew the whole drum even if she misses only one note while knitting, now she will go as far as the fingertips embracing the missing beats, leaving loose and sloppy “breathing holes” here and there.
She attempts to continue living.
She will resurrect.
KOMI’s Instagram: @gracecandy.