north korea wonsan 1931
In the winter of 1931, Wonsan, in northern Gangwon Province, was buried under an extraordinary amount of snow.
In the house of Master Go, a midwife had been present since the previous night, attending a birth that would produce a son to carry on the family line.
Master Go, a pro-Japanese official in charge of food supply for the Japanese military and foreign documents, had no children of his own. For this reason, a young Japanese girl, Haruka, had been tasked with bearing a child as a surrogate.
Haruka was the daughter of Shōbei, a Japanese peddler who frequently visited Master Go’s household.
Shōbei’s wife had died while traveling for her husband’s trade. She had given birth prematurely to Haruka and suffered relentless bleeding. Left alone, Shōbei carried Haruka, a tiny bundle of blood and flesh, while begging for milk along the road to feed and raise her.
Master Go had long purchased ink, books, and other items that Shōbei brought from Japan.
But Shōbei fell gravely ill—most likely with cancer, though at the time many diseases were neither understood nor treatable—and could no longer care for Haruka.
The peddler, emaciated and frail, showed Master Go a newly published book he had brought from Japan.
“Master,” Shōbei said, struggling to speak, “I am soon to depart from this world. I beg you, grant me one favor.”
“What nonsense are you speaking? You must recover. If you die, who will bring me my books?”
“Look at my face, Master. Is it not closer to the grave than to life? Please… take my daughter, Haruka, into your household as a servant in the kitchen. Feed her, give her a bed, and she will work diligently.”
Shōbei’s breathing grew ragged as he spoke. His eyes, usually unreadable, shone suddenly as if on the verge of tears.
“She is not only my daughter. She is gentle, skilled in cooking, and has read much, having grown up with a father who sells books and traveled with him extensively. You may trust her with the kitchen work.”
Master Go, who had bought Shōbei’s goods for over fifteen years, could not refuse. He took Haruka into his household to work in the kitchen. She was ten years old.
After that, Shōbei never returned to Master Go’s house. Other peddlers reported that he had died near Pyongyang.
Haruka was intelligent, quiet, and dexterous. Everyone loved her. The food and cakes she made were so beautiful that people hesitated to eat them. Whenever she had spare time, she enjoyed carving the faces of the other servants into small blocks of wood as gifts.
It was Master Go’s wife who began watching Haruka closely. Childless herself, she had repeatedly urged Master Go to take a concubine. But absorbed in books, Master Go showed little interest in women and thought adopting a child would suffice if they could not have one naturally.
Yet the wife’s sense of inadequacy ran deep; she believed a son must inherit Master Go’s vast lands, estates, and slaves. She insisted on ensuring a male heir.
When Haruka turned sixteen, after consultation with the family elders, Master Go’s wife decided that Haruka would serve as a surrogate.
Master Go shouted that it was absurd for him to lie with a girl he had treated like a daughter. Yet the elders—his aunts, his grandmother, and others—insisted it was their duty to ensure the continuation of the family line. Even Cheonga, a shaman whom the wife trusted absolutely, had predicted that this child would be a boy destined to bring great fortune and many descendants.
Thus, after several encounters, the forty-year-old Master Go and sixteen-year-old Haruka finally succeeded in conceiving.
Master Go felt guilty, as if betraying Shōbei, the loyal peddler who had brought him books for fifteen years, but he could not defy the will of the women determined to continue the family line.
By the end of December 1931, Haruka, now a sixteen-year-old girl in full bloom, went into labor as the snow fell endlessly across Wonsan.
After twenty-four hours of painful labor, her still-developing body was broken and battered.
“The foot is presenting… this is serious. Only the legs have emerged, and the child cannot come down, and yet it struggles so,” said the midwife.
Exhausted, both mother and child struggled through the bloody labor, while the household servants and neighbors gathered outside the door, offering remarks as if watching a public spectacle.
Then Master Go’s wife arrived, dragging Cheonga, the shaman. She opened the door and glared at the fainted Haruka as though she were a grotesque beast.
“Why all this fuss? Tear her open and take out the child!”
“Madam, the labor is difficult, and no Western doctor has arrived. If we cut now, she may bleed to death,” the midwife pleaded.
“I do not care if she dies! Just get the child!”
The midwife, tears and sweat mingling, heated her knife over the candle flame.
“Forgive me, Haruka… go to heaven. What is life worth anyway?” she whispered.
The sound of the blade tearing flesh seemed louder than Haruka’s own cries. Blood covered the floor.
Finally, the child was born.
The midwife wrapped the infant in white cloth to stop the bleeding, while Haruka lay motionless, like a lifeless body.
At that moment, Dr. Choi Jun-i arrived. He slammed the open door and entered the chaotic room.
Dr. Choi, a young doctor from Cheongju, had studied German medicine at Tokyo Imperial University and now served as the doctor to high-ranking Japanese officials and the military in Wonsan. He had been dispatched through a letter from Master Go’s acquaintance.
“What have you done? Such butchery…” he exclaimed.
Blood pooled across the room. Haruka’s face was already pale, like snow settling in the yard. Dr. Choi applied clean cotton to stem the bleeding, but Haruka’s lower body lay exposed, like a butchered deer, cold and motionless on the floor.
“Foolish… barbaric… foolish… barbaric…” he muttered.
The midwife washed the bloodied infant, wrapped her in cloth, and covered Haruka’s lower body with a blanket.
“Madam… it’s a girl,” she said, her voice trembling.
The mistress, unable to contain her fury, struck Cheonga.
“Curse this girl! Throw her to the beasts in the mountains! Let them tear her apart! Bind her and leave her for the wild animals!”
Haruka died from the bleeding, and Cheonga was sentenced to die in the mountains.
“One fierce girl, strong enough to take two lives upon entering this world…” muttered a servant pacing the room.
The next day, the midwife disappeared, packing her things, likely fleeing to avoid the mistress’s wrath.
The newborn girl was not allowed in the main house. She was raised by the servants and a nurse in the outbuilding. Only three months later, when the azaleas and forsythias were in full bloom, did Master Go order the child to be brought into the main house.
The baby smiled at Master Go, reminding him of Shōbei, the peddler who had always brought him books like a friend.
Yet the child had Haruka’s features: black eyes like clay, pale skin, and firm lips.
Master Go held her close. “A daughter, yet strong and handsome like a son… We shall name her Mihee—‘Beauty’ and ‘Joy.’”
Thus, Ko Mihee was born: the only child of a pro-Japanese landowner in Wonsan, in a household meant for a boy, during the Japanese occupation of Korea, to a mother who was the daughter of a Japanese peddler.