The Island of Sea Women

The Island of Sea Woman (March 2019) is the most recent title by New York Times bestselling author Lisa See. It is classified in the categories of Historical Asian Fiction and Asian American Literature. Many of See’s books discuss the Chinese immigrant experience in America; her paternal great-grandfather was Chinese, and this family history has had a great influence on her historical fiction. See’s books have been published in 39 languages, and she has been the recipient of the Golden Spike Award from the Chinese Historical Association. Her other well-known works include Shanghai Girls (2009), Snowflower and the Secret Fan (2005), and Lady Tan's Circle of Women (2023).

The Island of Sea Women explores the culture of South Korean female divers known as the haenyeo. It follows the friendship between two divers named Young-sook and Mi-ja, spanning episodes in their lives from 1938 through 2008. The action of the story primarily takes place on Jeju Island off the coast of South Korea, with additional episodes occurring during a diving expedition near Vladivostok, Russia.

There are two distinct points of view employed in the novel. The activity taking place in 2008 is described by an omniscient narrator perceiving Young-sook as an eighty-five-year-old woman. The rest of the book consists of Young-sook’s life story told from her first-person perspective. While the diver’s history proceeds in chronological fashion, the narrative of each segment of her life is bracketed by chapters taking place in 2008.

Young-sook and Mi-ja form a close friendship as they learn to become divers together, get married, have babies, and both suffer through a particularly difficult period of South Korea’s history right after World War II. The country’s struggles to recover from its trauma is mirrored in the broken friendship between the two divers that takes half a century to repair. In following the fates of these two women, their fragmented friendship, and their equally fragmented country, the novel explores the themes of haenyeo culture in the face of progress, the price of anger, and the role of understanding in achieving forgiveness.

Plot Summary

Baby divers Young-sook and Mi-ja begin their training as haenyeo female divers of Jeju Island on the same day. They are surrounded by strong women who are the principal breadwinners and leaders of their families while their husbands and sons take a domestic role. The girls resolve to stay together throughout life. Their bond remains close through their teen years, marriages, and the births of their first children.

However, political events test the strength of their friendship. Post-war Korea is partitioned into a communist north and a democratic south, with factions from both sides trying to take over the other half of the nation. This power struggle has terrible consequences for the friends and their loved ones. In 1949, the people of their village are threatened with slaughter by the Korean military for supposedly killing two soldiers. All the townspeople are innocent, but this makes no difference to the squad sent to ferret out insurgents in their midst. Young-sook begs Mi-ja to use her husband’s political influence to save one of her own three children. Mi-ja refuses to help and is led away to safety while Young-sook sees her husband, son, and sister-in-law slaughtered right before her eyes. She refuses to forgive her friend for this betrayal, and also turns a deaf ear to Mi-ja’s attempts to explain her actions.

In 2008, Mi-ja’s granddaughter and family come to Jeju Island as tourists. Mi-ja’s great-granddaughter Clara seeks out Young-sook and eventually gets her to listen to a recording of Mi-ja expressing her regret and offering reasons for why she didn’t take action to save Young-sook’s family. On the same day that the Korean government dedicates a memorial to the victims of the Bukchon Massacre, Young-sook is able to put her own anger aside and finally forgive her friend. As a peacemaking gesture, she invites Mi-ja’s descendants to swim with her in the ocean.

All page number citations are taken from the Kindle edition (March 2019) of this book.