introduction to the project
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.
​
The encounter is evoked by the words in the title that point to two contrasting and complementary condiments from each culture: azúcar (sugar) and sal (salt), The condiments are metaphorically linked to time, space and place: sugar is elaborated in the fast pace of fire of ‘la zafra’ in Puerto Rico, whereas salt is elaborated in the slow salt farms of the Korean peninsula, drawing our attention to the actions of cultivation to generate and sustain life.
Therefore, Entre el Azúcar y la Sal aims to unearths the ‘imaginary’ of South Korean women and bring to light the intangible history of the encounter between Puerto Rican and South Korean cultures to find how customs (both collective and individual) traditions, stories, legends are trans-located and transposed in order to establish ‘place’ in the host country; cultural and personal markers that demarcate the new space where life reemerges after the transition. These markers are unique to each woman as well as shared and serve as a bridge between South Korea and the island.
The heart of the project is the podcast library with the collection of stories held in this website. However, the archive will complemented by other dynamic ways of sharing these stories both in Puerto Rico and South Korea using a wider set of digital tools that will allow audiences to immerse themselves with the women, the stories and the parallel histories of the two countries.
We have completed the first prototype, the story of Mrs Janette OI who came to the island in the early 1970s.
​
She lives in Cayey, Puerto Rico.