Sonmi

Sonmi is an elderly woman from Sinanju whose father was known by some villagers as a powerful shaman. In her final scene she rows into West Korean Bay, scatters herbs, recites inherited chants and drowns. A separate foreword calls her the shaman’s daughter and an aunt in Nuihc’s family.

Sonmi grows up in a household shunned by the village. Her mother dies in childbirth and her father dies only shortly before the epilogue. The narrative says Sonmi learned chants passed down through her father’s family; a foreword also describes her studying the black arts under her father. These passages present her as a human practitioner from a feared family, not as the supernatural being later associated with her body.

The epilogue in By Eminent Domain depicts Sonmi’s solitary trip into the bay and her death by drowning. Father to Son repeats the scene in its Foreword. The passages describe one episode in two placements, not two separate suicides.

The human Sonmi is distinct from the Lost Master called the Forgotten One. The later story says his spirit had animated her frail body; when it leaves, the narration describes the body as Sonmi’s again and identifies her as the last bloodline of that family. The scene does not make Sonmi and the spirit one person, nor does it show Sonmi returning to life after the drowning.