북으로 간 해녀들－제주 해녀들의 어떤 월경(越境)사－

Abstract

This paper focuses on North Korea, which so far was not explored as a part of Cheju female divers’ transborder migration space. I will investigate the cross-border migrations by the divers, and will attempt to look at these divers’ North Korean lives. In this way, I am going to fill the existing lacuna in the studies on Cheju women divers’ modern migrations. In the modern period the sea spaces between Japan and Korea were appropriated by the Japanese Empire. Cheju female divers, the marginalized practitioners of free diving (with only rudimentary equipment), became cross-border migratory workers. The largest migration took place to Tsushima. However, the post-Liberation conflicts between South Korea and Japan over the maritime territories further exacerbated the anguish which the divers felt over the availability of the marine resources, in addition to the persistent ethnic discrimination issue. As a result, they mostly had to leave Tsushima rather early. Around 10 of them chose to take the repatriation ships to North Korea after the mass repatriation of Zainichi Koreans there started in 1959. While we know next to nothing about what happened to them personally in North Korea thereafter, it is known that the interest in female divers rose in North Korea after that, and their anti-Japanese movement was duly commemorated too. In North Korea, the Cheju female drivers were customarily described as the subjects of “struggle against aggression,” such as April 3, 1948 uprising in Cheju, or anti-colonial movement preceding it, rather than as labour migrants seeking to maintain their livelihood. These Cheju female divers who moved North were accepted by the North Korean society as a part of this cognitive framework.