From Wonso Pond (37 page)

First of all, one of the male workers brought over the pre-boiled cocoons, which were poured into the cauldrons of boiling water. Kannan stirred them with a small broom of sorts and pushed them down into the water. After a while the tips of the silk threads would stick to the broom. At first she pulled off all the bad threads and attached them to the nails sticking out of either side of the cauldron. Then she passed the broom through the water again to fish for more threads. This time they were transparent and had a slightly golden hue. Kannan grabbed the thread tips with her left hand, and with her right hand she separated each one and attached it to a porcelain needle. The threads began to slowly unravel as they glided up into the air.

At the factory in Seoul each person had one, or at most two, porcelain needles to thread—nowhere near the dozens of needles they were put in charge of here. Kannan attached threads to three of the needles. At first she worked with just these three until she got the hang of it, but then she gradually increased the number of needles she used. The southern wall of the factory was made entirely of glass, and even the ceiling was fit with glass windows. There were two rows of spinning machines, each facing the other, with a corridor between, the length of which the supervisors walked up and down. In Seoul there were only five supervisors, but here it seemed like there were thirty.

From here at station No. 500 the line still stretched into the distance, with hundreds more stations. Her face flushing in the heat, Sonbi watched as the thread tips were drawn up and out of the cauldron. Kannan's hands were already bright pink, scalded by the boiling water. Her fingers were white and swollen.

“Kannan! Let me do it for a while.”

Sonbi spoke with her mouth to Kannan's ear. The sweat was dripping off of Kannan's face like droplets of rain. Kannan smiled and shook her head. She kept picking off threads and attaching them to the porcelain needles.

“Pretty good for a first-timer.”

When Kannan turned, she saw one of the supervisors standing to the side of her. He then looked over at Sonbi.

“Now, pay good attention to how she does this. The sooner you get to work, the sooner you'll start making money.”

Sonbi had already been terribly self-conscious of standing there doing absolutely nothing, but now she was at her wit's end after what
this man had just said to her. The supervisor stared at Sonbi's lowered face out of the corner of his eye, and remained there in front of them.

The electric lights flashed on brightly. Taken by surprise, Sonbi looked up at the lamps, then stared out at all the machines and women workers stretching out before her eyes. Have I entered a different world now? she wondered, taking in the transformation of her surroundings.

“Hey, Sonbi. You give it a try!”

Kannan moved aside. When Sonbi grabbed one of the thread tips, her hand began to shake and her arms and legs started to tremble. She couldn't maneuver her hands the way she wanted to.

“Careful! One of the threads is broken!”

Kannan stepped firmly on a pedal and the machine shut down. Kannan fed the tip of the thread through the porcelain needle and then tied the thread back onto itself.

“ W hen the thread breaks, you've got to tie it back together like this. Look, Sonbi! And if you want to shut down the machine, you press this pedal down here and it stops the spinning.”

Just then the sound of a siren pierced the air. Sonbi looked to either side of her, wide-eyed, in alarm.

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“Oh, Sonbi! When that siren rings, we get to go. It means the night shift is coming in to continue the work.”

Before Kannan had even finished speaking, the women on the night shift started to pour out onto the factory floor. After shutting down her machine, Kannan pulled out her
waku
of spun silk. Before she left the factory, she took her place at the back of a line, where the women workers were queued up outside the appraisal office.

“Sonbi, you just go on ahead.”

Sonbi waited outside the factory doors. The machines inside the factory continued to produce a terrible roar. When she saw Kannan coming, she walked up to her. The bell was ringing in the cafeteria.

“Hey, let's go! That sounds like a dinner bell or something . . .”

Since they were living in the factory dormatory, even Kannan was unsure of how everything worked. When they made it to the cafeteria, they found the place filled with hundreds of factory girls sitting down to dinner. The cafeteria was in the basement, directly below the dormitory.
The rectangular shaped room was warm and humid with the steam of cooking rice. Four rows of long, wooden boards stretched from one side of the cafeteria all the way to the other, with wooden rice pots and empty bowls laid out neatly on the tables. Just seeing the rice whetted their appetites, so they picked up their spoons and dug into their food. The stuff was boiled rice all right, but it had no flavor. It tasted like reheated cold rice and it gave off a smell almost like gasoline. Kannan took another spoonful and examined it. She looked over at Sonbi and then at Insuk. They were all thinking the same thing.

“What's the matter with this rice?”

A group over in the corner was talking about the rice, too. If only the side dish had been tasty, the rice might have been edible, but what was supposed to be fermented baby shrimp seemed to have been only recently pickled, with a lump of salt still stuck in the middle of it. It gave off a fishy smell and was simply impossible to eat. They were all so hungry that their stomachs were grumbling, and yet their taste buds weren't tempted in the least. Each of them looked at the others, spoons still in hand. After trying a few more spoonfuls, most of the factory girls left the cafeteria in tears. A few of the girls who had been among the first to begin working at the factory and had become accustomed to the food spoke up.

“You just wait ‘til you're really hungry! You'll be down here gobbling up this Annamese rice, believe me. Try not eating for a couple days and you'll see. Do you really think they're going to run out of this imported stuff? Ha!”

Granted, they had suffered from stomach trouble for the first few days, and had had diarrhea for a week or so. But eventually they'd had no other choice but to eat the rice. And now that they were accustomed to eating it, they no longer got sick or thought it smelled like gasoline. Nothing was worse than being hungry. And they knew that anyone who refused to eat the rice would change her mind when she got really hungry.

About an hour had passed since they had come upstairs from the cafeteria when the bell in the dormitory started ringing.

“What's that bell mean?” Kannan asked one of the girls who had stopped by.

“You don't know? That's the night school bell . . . Come on, let's get ready.”

“You mean everyone has to go?”

“Well, of course. Isn't it good we've got a chance to study? Come on, girls, let's go.”

She hurried off with short, quick steps. A smirk settled on Kannan's lips, and she looked back at Insuk and Sonbi. They were leaning up against the window, hungry and listless, as they stared outside.

“Kannan! I think the food here tasted so awful because we had such a good breakfast at home this morning.”

“Probably . . . What did they call it again? Annamese rice?”

“I think so.”

“Well, no wonder it smells like gasoline! How do they expect anyone to eat it?”

“Beats me, but if that's what they give us, there's not much we can do about it! Okay, let's quit the small talk and check out this night school! I wonder what they're going to teach us . . .”

Sonbi was hungry, but she pricked her ears at the mention of night school, and got up slowly. She recalled a scene from her past—when Tokho had robbed her of her virginity, after luring her with the promise of sending her to school. She barely managed to keep her legs from trembling enough to follow the others and take a seat in the lecture hall.

Up on the platform stood the same supervisor, with large, dark-rimmed glasses, who had given Kannan a compliment earlier in the day. He took furtive glances at the factory girls as they made their way into the hall. For this man with dark splotches around his eyes, these glasses were his sole attempt at personal grooming. Once all the girls had gathered, the supervisor told them they would go over the factory rules instead of studying because so many new girls had just arrived. He cleared his throat, quickly looked to either side of him, and began to speak.

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“What sets our factory apart from other smaller ones is the special consideration we give to the future lives and everyday convenience of each of our employees. As you can see before your eyes, we've spared no expense in building this dormitory, in arranging for this night school, and in setting up a store that supplies everyday items for all your shopping needs.”

The supervisor, pleased with himself, thrust back his shoulders and stuck out his chest, then took a look around the lecture hall.

“Let's say you go out to the market to buy something you use on a regular basis, something like socks or cosmetics. Not only will the prices be high, but there's a very good chance you'll end up being cheated. That's why we've set up a shop right here in the factory that offers you everything you'll ever need at wholesale prices. The place is for you and you alone. The factory, for its part, actually loses money by operating it.”

The factory girls, their nerves on edge, now heaved a collective sigh of relief.

“But that's not all . . . for the benefit of all our employees, we have also set up a savings system. Savings is the light of the future! And that's why as long you work hard, we'll provide you with all the food and daily necessities you need and then deposit the remainder of your earnings in the bank for you. That way you can earn as much as you want to. All you have to do is hold onto that passbook of yours, and when you leave in three years' time, you'll have cash in the bank to pay for your weddings. How about that? Hah, ha . . .”

A vulgar smile appeared on the man's lips, but the factory girls giggled along with him.

“So stick it out for three years, and by the time you leave the factory, you'll be ready to set up a house, have a few children and enjoy the easy life. Now, all of you signed three-year contracts when you entered this factory, but those three years will go by faster than you could ever imagine. And when the time comes, you'll probably want to stay even longer. You see, the reason the factory wants to treat you so well is that each one of you has come with a guarantee from the police station, am I right? And I'm sure that you must all feel incredibly lucky to have been selected out of such a large pool of applicants. Tell me, have you ever heard of a place as good as a factory like this? Do you have any idea how many people are out there roaming the streets without jobs?”

At the memory of weeding the fields in the countryside with barely enough millet to keep themselves fed, the factory girls truly felt overwhelmed with their own good fortune. The supervisor's glasses flickered in the light from the electric lamps. He twisted the side of his mustache and continued.

“Here at this factory we also take it upon ourselves to maintain a
strict code of moral discipline, so that none of our girls ends up spoiling her future prospects in life. And insofar as we prohibit you from leaving the factory grounds individually for this specific reason, all of you will no doubt miss contact with the outside world. But each year in the spring and fall we'll head out on a field trip with specially prepared box lunches. In fact, the office is right now making plans for the spring to provide you with new shoes at a discount and to take you all to Wolmido Island for a picnic . . .”

At these words, there seemed to be a glimmer of hope and joy in the eyes of all the factory girls. But Kannan wanted to jump to her feet and refute what the supervisor was saying—she was burning up inside.

“Here at this factory we also offer you a holiday every third Sunday, when we'll let you play sports and other games on the grounds out in front. This is of course for the sake of everyone's good health, and these holidays are one of the special advantages of working in this factory. Finally, I want you all to think of this factory as your very own factory. We have to keep it spotlessly clean, and work as efficiently as possible, so that you all can earn bonuses in addition to your regular salaries. Any slackers will pay penalties, mind you, so be forewarned!”

The audience stood up in unison, bowed to the supervisor, and slowly made their way out of the lecture hall in a huge crowd.

The bell rang once again. This being the bedtime bell, they all went to the toilet, returned to their rooms, and switched off the electric lights.

As she was tired, Kannan fell asleep for a while before rising in the middle of the night. Everything was completely still. All she could hear was the clamor of the machines coming from the factory floor. She went over to the window and wistfully stared outside. Just one day earlier she had been so excited, sitting there in front of Sinch'ol. But as she stood here alone now, thinking about all the work the future would hold for her, that future seemed awfully bleak. She knew of course that she had the support of more than enough comrades on the outside, but being locked up behind that jet-black wall made her feel terribly lonely. Outside her glass window there it stood—the wall encircling the athletic ground and soaring up so high into the air! Since the very minute she had entered the dormitory, that wall had been a source of deep concern for Kannan. And while she'd pinned her hopes on finding a hole at the base of it, the dark bricks had been stacked up extra-high at the top, and below them the surface of the wall had been cemented over with concrete
to the height of several men. It seemed like an impenetrable sheet of iron—from here she couldn't see a single crack in it.