THE SEA WOMEN OF SOUTH KOREA
By Andrea DenHoed , MARCH 29, 2015
F or hundreds of years, women in the South Korean island province of Jeju have made their living harvesting seafood by hand from the ocean floor. Known as haenyeo, or sea women, they use no breathing equipment, although a typical dive might last around two minutes and take them as deep as ten metres underwater. Wearing old-fashioned headlight-shaped scuba masks, most dive with lead weights strapped around their waists to help them sink faster. A round flotation device called a tewak, about the size of a basketball, sits at the surface of the water with a net hanging beneath it to collect the harvest. Some use a sharp tool to dig conch, abalone, and other creatures from the crevices on the seafloor.
The photographer Hyung S. Kim regularly went to Jeju between 2012 and 2014 in order to photograph the haenyeo. He set up a plain white backdrop near the shore, and would persuade divers to have their pictures taken as they emerged from the water, usually after five or six hours of work. “This was a very difficult process,” Kim says. “They were not used to being photographed, especially against an artificially created background, so they would often avoid me entirely.” The resulting portraits (which are currently on display at the Korean Cultural Service in New York, in prints that span from floor to ceiling) show what will likely be the last generation of haenyeo. Of the approximately twenty-five hundred active divers today (down from more than twenty thousand in the nineteen-sixties), the vast majority are over the age of sixty. The youngest is thirty-eight, and the oldest woman Kim photographed was over ninety. Last year, South Korea applied to have the haenyeo added to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list.
“For me, the photos of the haenyeo reflect and overlap with the images I have of my mother and grandmother,” Kim says. “They are shown exactly as they are, tired and breathless. But, at the same time, they embody incredible mental and physical stamina, as the work itself is so dangerous; every day they cross the fine line between life and death. I wanted to capture this extreme duality of the women: their utmost strength combined with human fragility.”
Meet The Last Generation Of Haenyo, Korea’s Real-Life Mermaids
Priscilla Frank, Oct 25, 2016
T he Korean tradition of deep-sea diving for oysters, sea cucumbers, abalones, sea urchins, and squid dates back to the 5th century. Originally, it was a male-dominated profession, not all that surprisingly. However, by the 18th century, women divers, also known as Haenyo, or “sea women,” far outnumbered men.
Diving is no easy job. Haenyo had to descend up to twenty meters in freezing cold water without any equipment, holding their breath for over two minutes at a time. Through mastering the craft, many women replaced their husband as the primary breadwinners of the home.
Fast forward a few centuries to 2016, where the tradition of Haenyo still exists, though perhaps not for long. New York-based photographer Mijoo Kim set out to document the resilient women who have dedicated their life to the art of diving. “These women divers are carrying on a Korean legacy and will be the last of their kind,” Kim wrote in an email to The Huffington Post. “They are the last generation of Haenyo.”
The younger generation of Korean women raised on the islands that once served as home to the Haenyo are now flocking to the mainland in pursuit of an education or more modern career. As of 2010, most of the already dwindling population of Haenyo were over 70 years old, with no generation of women training to serve as their successors.
Kim, a Korean woman herself, has long viewed photography as a vessel through which to tell stories about her cultural heritage. She was particularly drawn to the Haenyo who, despite their lasting legacy and intense work ethic, remain largely unknown outside of Korea.
The shooting process was not an easy one. Kim would wake up around 4 a.m. to accompany Haenyo on their deep sea journeys. She drove two hours to South Korea’s Gijang County in the dead of winter ― whose temperatures, in 2013, the year Kim created the series, averaged around 30°F. Yet winter is sea urchin ― or uni ― season, so winter is when the Haenyo get to business.
“The first day I tried to take photo underwater, that was the hardest day of shooting,” Kim said. “I thought I was a good swimmer. I also was so confident, and I was so excited to be able to shoot underwater, but the underwater situation is not easy at all. I couldn’t even follow them. They seemed like young mermaids to me—so fast and flexible. I didn’t even see any sea urchin because the sea urchins look just like rocks in the water.”
Kim’s resulting series features images of the Haenyo both in action and at rest, showing the intensity of their daily regimen as well as the expressions on their faces. The most powerful images zoom up close on the women, their faces smushed by the slick wetsuits swallowing their heads. Exhaustion is written across their faces, tears welling in their eyes.
Through the series, Kim hopes to immortalize a women-led tradition that may not exist much longer. “I hope to share not only their beauty as women, but also their courageousness for facing such difficulties during their lives,” she said. She hopes to continue the series whenever she visits Korea.
