ENTRE EL AZÚCAR Y LA SAL
(BETWEEN SUGAR AND SALT)
EVERY STORY IS UNIQUE, EVERY STORY DESERVES TO BE TOLD
The project ENTRE EL AZÚCAR Y LA SAL (BETWEEN SUGAR AND SALT) will collect and archive the extraordinary stories of South Korean women who have settled in Puerto Rico directly from South Korea. The presence of South Korean women is a fact not known to many, neither in Puerto Rico nor in South Korea. Yet these stories that span decades from the 1950s to the present have contributed to shape Puerto Rican contemporary society, yet go mostly unacknowledged. The stories offer a comparative view of two territories with immense differences in scale, language, culture, but with a shared history forged in depth and strength of spirit.
This is Mrs Janet OI, she came to Puerto Rico in the 1970s, she lives in Cayey, Puerto Rico. Here, the first chapter of her story as an introduction
Transcript and Translation Chapter 1 Introduction
00:012-00:045
I am from Kyong-Sang-Book-Do (경상북도) part of Daegu, in the South. I was born in the countryside, my name is '정혜', '정돈' everybody knows it, it is my grandfather’s name. I was born there in 1953.
00:52-01:08
I even lived in Seoul, I used to work there, that is where I met my husband, that is also where my eldest daughter was born. When she was two months old, we came to the US, [Puerto Rico].
01:15-02:00
He was an MP in the army, I had just finished training in the police academy and I was working in the town. The American soldiers were very young, at least then, they were 20, 21, 18…so when they arrived here [Seoul], they suffered a lot because they missed their families, their girlfriends. So at the end of the day when they went out, they drank a lot and many of them lost control. It was our job to collect them in cars and take them back to the army base gate. At the gate I saw this handsome MP Puerto Rican, my prince.
02:02-02:27
His name is Jose Ortiz Aponte, but I didn’t know what Puerto Rico was, I thought he was American, because he is white, blond, very beautiful with big eyes and I thought, ahh this guy is more handsome than the others, big eyelashes, very tall and he looked great in his MP uniform.
02:30-02:32
So that is how I came [here].