South Korean Sea Women

I just saw this story on the NY Times about South Korean "Sea Women" and it brought back memories. I'm not the most nationalistic person out there, but I am proud to be an American born Korean. My family came over in the late 1970s to New York and I went back to visit my relatives when I was thirteen in 1993 for the summer. I learned quite a bit about who I am, where I came from and about my family in particular.

I took a trip down to Cheju-Do [Cheju Island] with my cousins from Seoul. It was something like a fifteen hour long trainride. It was quite the journey. I crammed myself in between two seats that were facing away from each other. Picture the "A" shaped negative space. I crammed my bag and myself in there. It wasn't that much of a problem though, I can fall asleep anywhere, in just about any position no matter how loud it may be around me. The only thing was that there's a snack cart that goes through all of the cars and I'd have to move my legs out of the way when it came by.

We stayed in a hostel type place with a heated stone floor, typical of Korean hostels. I saw these women diving for sea animals. It was pretty cool.

Later in the summer, back on the mainland, my family was on the beach and we walked along the beach and saw people selling their catch in buckets. Can't get fresher than that. I remember seeing one slimy looking thing in one of the buckets and I asked my parents what it was. They told me it was as sea urchin or sea cucumber, I forget exactly. I made a squirmy face at them. Not an hour later, we were in a restaurant eating. The server brought over a small plate of cut up slices of shiny black stuff. I asked my parents what it was. They told me to have a piece. I did. I put it in my mouth and it slid down my throat without much effort. It didn't taste like anything, but it was weird. I asked them again. They said, "Remember that thing in the bucket?" Heh. Damn parents and their trixies.

Anyways. The article pointed out that these diving women will be extinct in the next two decades or so which made me sad. Another piece of the "old ways" will die off with the more prosperous tourist industry.

Photo: Seokyong Lee/NYT

Comments

[nana]

south korean is the best