There is an episode in the Netflix drama When Life Gives You Tangerines where a woman dives into the sea and brings back a catch of abalone (sea snails), which she says will feed her family. The woman is a haenyeo. Haenyeo, or “women of the sea”, have been recorded as far back as the 17th century and are unique to the island of Jeju in South Korea, where they fish sustainably, diving time and again on a single breath to bring back shellfish and seaweed.
Yet the scene, set in the 1960s, simply wouldn’t happen today, says Myeonghyo Go, a haenyeo who lives in the village of Iho-dong on Jeju. “The seaweeds here are disappearing, and seaweed is the food for abalone. Because we don’t have the seaweeds, we don’t have abalone,” she says.
Myeonghyo is not only a haenyeo, she is a citizen scientist and environmentalist. In her 40s, she represents the new generation of Korea’s traditional divers and her mission is to change the way the women are seen by the outside world.
Haenyeo are one of the country’s most famous cultural exports, with Unesco officially inscribing their work on the representative list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity because of their focus on sustainability. Yet their future is at a crossroads. Most of them now are over 70, so the national government and the Jeju authorities are keen for a new generation to come forward.
When the provincial government (Jeju is a self-governing province within Korea) made its application to Unesco it described how the haenyeo represent “the island’s character and people’s spirit”, yet Myeonghyo feels the resulting fascination with the haenyeo has not always been beneficial to the women’s future.
“I feel uncomfortable when stories about the haenyeo are shared,” she says. “They [those who are telling the stories] take everything that is really important out and only show certain aspects of our lives.”
She adds: “There is a famous haenyeo choir and if there’s an official event they are often invited to sing nice songs. But the haenyeo tradition of singing together started from when things became tiring and difficult [during work]. So our songs are not joyous, per se, and what you are seeing is not really authentic.”
The fascination with the haenyeo has peaked in the past few years as part of the frenzy over Korean culture, kicked off by the rise of K-pop. In 2022, another K-drama, Our Blues, also followed the lives of the sea women, and last year a documentary, The Last of the Sea Women, generated publicity for Apple TV. This month, the BBC will show the first programme it has made in Korea (in collaboration with broadcaster JTBC), Deep Dive Korea. It follows Korean model and actor Song Ji-hyo as she attempts to become a haenyeo.
Myeonghyo wants to use the popularity of the haenyeo to create a school to educate people about ocean ecology and create a team of citizen scientists.
“When I feel we [the haenyeo] are being used, it used to make me feel quite lonely,” she says. “Then I started to change my mind and think, can I use this interest to tell the real story instead? For me, that is a story that draws on a long tradition of protecting the weak, both in our community and in the natural world.”
She says that the haenyeo have a tradition called halmeoni bada, which translates as Grandma ocean. It is a designated area of shallow water where the oldest haenyeo go and catch. “So we have this way of caring for elderly people and the weak,” she says. “And then we have communal diving days once or twice a month, where whatever we catch we divide equally between all the haenyeo, regardless of age or experience.”
The haenyeo also work with the ocean when they fish, so they don’t dive during a shellfish’s breeding season, for example, but harvest seaweed instead. They also avoid catching conch if they are smaller than 7cm to give the species a chance to reproduce before being harvested.
“We survive on collecting and selling the seafood, but we are also protecting them,” she says. “We show how humans and nature can coexist.”
Myeonghyo volunteers with the Paran ocean citizen science centre, a relatively new local NGO that employs citizen science to document the changes in the seas around Jeju and uses the information to lobby the government for enhanced marine protection.
She needed to be taught to dive with scuba gear to document the ocean flora, and since doing so says she has noticed large, hard corals appearing alongside Jeju’s traditional soft corals. These are more typically found in tropical waters and have only started appearing in such numbers in the past five years when the water temperature around the south side of Jeju has risen markedly, reaching a new record high last year, according to data from the National Institute of Fisheries Science. The same area has also experienced a sharp decline in seaweed, outbreaks of jellyfish and green algae, and the melting of soft corals.
Sanghoon Yoon, an adviser at Paran, whose mother was a haenyeo, says the older generation are not always keen to raise their voices about the environment. “Yet the ocean is changing rapidly and they are the first ones to witness those changes and so when we go and talk to them on a one-to-one basis, they start to open their hearts more. My hope is that the younger generation will lead on this change in what the haenyeo stand for.”
Before she can start on the rest of the world, however, Myeonghyo has a challenge to tackle closer to home – her mum.
Sixty-nine-year-old Chunsuk Son became a haenyeo at 17, following in the footsteps of her mother, but she doesn’t see why her daughter has to do the same.
“When I educated her, I wanted her to have a proper job like joining the civil service,” she says. “We older women don’t want our daughters to be haenyeo, but Myeonghyo keeps saying that she wants to be one in order to protect the ocean and to help to make where we live a better place. I know she has a different aim [as a haenyeo] and a different direction. In any case, she doesn’t listen to me.”
Additional reporting by Eunhae Grace Jung
