Haenyeo: The Sea Women of Jeju Island
The first time I saw them, they struck me as rather fragile. The image was that of a group of middle-aged women, four in total, wearing mostly orange wetsuits, holding what appeared to be nets and other fishing tools. They walked towards the sea with deliberate parsimony, as if enacting some kind of slow ritual that involves showing their tools to the sea before daring to inflict them upon it. One of them was very elderly and carried herself with a stern expression of fatigue.
“Haenyeo” translates literally as sea women. They come from a tradition of female divers whose origin is difficult to pinpoint (some records date back to 1128) but is known to trace back over a thousand years. No matter how fragile they looked to me at first glance, they are -like the ajummas in the martkplaces- yet another example of the strength of South Korean women.
They practice a form of free-diving called muljil, which consists of descending as deep as 20 meters holding their breath for one to two minutes at a time in search of seafood. The typical catch is abalone, conch, and seaweed. And just like their Jagalchi counterparts in the fish markets of Busan, there was a point in history when they became the primary breadwinners of Jeju.
Thanks to the Haenyeo and despite the strong Confucian-based patriarchal norms of Korea, Jeju became what some scholars describe as a semi-matriarchal or matrifocal society. The Haenyeo were able to negotiate a level of autonomy within their families that was unavailable to women in mainland Korea. One of the most interesting observations by Cho (Han) Hae-joang, a leading Korean anthropologist, is that unlike many other cultures where modernization pushed women out of the workforce, the Haenyeo became more central to the economy during Korea’s industrialization because their "primitive" harvesting remained highly profitable. In other words, the profit of their labour set them somewhat free.
And magic happens wherever women are free. Firstly, they are thought of as living promoters of "Bul-teok," both a physical and figurative gathering space (often stone-walled circles on the beach) where they change, warm up by a fire, and make collective decisions. These spaces serve as the "boardrooms" of the community, where their knowledge and tradition is passed down from mother to daughter and social bonds are forged. Very much the seed of a democratic institution. Secondly: All the caring. They adhere to strict sustainability practices guided by the principle of “not taking more than what the sea gives”, rejecting industrial tooling and even the oxygen tanks that would put them in a position to pick the seafloor clean until they destroy their own livelihood. Insanely wise. The Haenyeo do not view the ocean as a wild resource to be plundered, but as a "sea garden" or "field" to be tended.
Despite being inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity since 2016, their numbers are dwindling due to climate change and ageing (most of the active Haenyo are beyond 60 years old), so it is worth paying them a visit in the Haenyeo School, at the base of the gorgeously green Seongsan Ilchulbong.
They wear amazing shoes too.
