What’s it like to go diving with the haenyeo in Jeju Island, South Korea
Wearing only goggle masks, these women dive into the sea to collect sea urchins, fat abalone, turban shells, sea squirt and other delicious marine morsels.
“Would you like to go diving with the haenyeo?” the concierge at the newly opened JW Marriott Jeju asked.
“Is the Pope Catholic?” I replied. “Sign me up!”
People who know me will tell you that I’m so inactive and inert by nature, I make a sloth look like it’s been crushing Red Bull for days. So, it says something that I didn’t hesitate when the concierge made the offer. After all, it isn’t every day that one gets to hang out with the haenyeo, Jeju’s legendary female divers.
Wearing only goggle masks, these women dive into the sea to collect sea urchins, fat abalone, turban shells, sea squirt and other delicious marine morsels which are then sold to local restaurants and residents. And they do this without any breathing apparatus. Just strong lungs and core muscles. If the Amazons and Atlanteans had ever mated, the haenyeo would have been their offspring.
The haenyeo date their tradition back 300 years to the Chosun dynasty when one of the kings apparently exiled some out-of-favour court members to Jeju. Struggling to make ends meet, the ladies took to the sea wearing thin white tunics and black leggings which exposed them to the cold waters, hypothermia and the like. Over time, the outfits were updated, so that wet suits and flippers are now standard equipment, but not much else has changed in the intervening centuries.
Today, Jeju’s close-knit haenyeo community numbers some 3,200 women scattered along the island’s gorgeous coastline. In Seogwipo, the district where JW Marriott is located, there are around 50 active members, though a generation ago, they numbered 150.
At the local Beophwan Haenyeo Experience Center, a few minutes drive from the hotel, we were collected by Mija Ko, a petite, sprightly, bright-eyed woman who, at 19, began working as a haenyeo to help raise her family. That was 50 years ago. “I was born and raised in the ocean,” she said as she checked my wetsuit. I couldn’t help but marvel at her smooth snowy-white skin. She had no pores. It was like looking at a dolphin. “My mother-in-law was a haenyeo, but we’re the only ones in our family.”
Every day at 8am, Ko scrambles across a narrow strip of basalt rocks out to the bay and ocean. From January to May, the sea yields a harvest of shellfish, abalone and sea cucumber. From the end of June to July, it’s all about uni, though this year, the season lasted just five to six days on account of the high waves. On a good day, she collects a kilo of seafood which she sells at a fixed rate of 150,000 KRW (S$153), of which 2000 KRW (S$2) is donated to the haenyo community as a kind of tithe.
A senior haenyeo can dive up to eight metres while holding her breath for a minute and a half, if not longer, while juniors go down to six. “You’ll do one metre,” Ko told me.
“That’s plenty,” I assured her as we padded out across the rocks, she nimbly darting ahead like some marine goat, while I slowly picked my way behind, convinced I was going to slip and break a hip any time soon.
Eventually, we came to the edge of a small bay ringed with a low sea wall that kept the waters calm. There were already a number of day-trippers and families, some gently bobbing in the sea and others taking selfies with their camera sticks. Ko was already in the water, one hand gripping a conical net hitched to a yellow float that kept the net and its contents afloat.
She blew air out her mouth in a two-note whistle, and down she went in a straight vertical line. Seconds later, she surfaced brandishing a large shell which she proceeded to pry open against the rock. She extracted the meat and passed it around the group. It tasted of the sea ‒ sweet, succulent, briny all at once.
I tried to dive. Which is when I realised that I have no core to speak of. No one tells you that in really salty water, the buoyancy is so strong that you need a strong core to resist the push-back of the sea. Whereas Ko went into the water at 90-degrees like a knife through butter, I only managed, after 20 minutes of determined effort, to enter at a very slight five-degree angle to a depth of one metre ‒ the vast seafloor sprinkled with shellfish just tantalisingly out of reach, my hands vainly reaching and grasping for a hard-ridged mollusc ‒ before I was pushed back to the surface.
Ko gave me a thumbs up for effort, though I couldn’t help but wonder if she did that for every visitor. Still, I’d made an effort and half an hour later, after a quick shower and dry off, we were rewarded with lunch in the centre’s seafood restaurant, Jomnyeo Sumbi Sori. One by one, the dishes emerged from the small kitchen, everything wonderfully cooked by Minhi, a junior haenyeo who’d traded in a life in the hotel industry to enrol in the haenyeo diving school. Set up in 2015, it is the first of its kind in South Korea. When she’s not cooking up a feast, she’s cheerfully diving each day into the sea.
Turban shell was thinly sliced and then sauteed. Pajeong, the thin, crispy vegetable pancake, was accompanied by a bowl of perfectly al-dente ramen, and crunchy beansprout salad tossed with seaweed. In summer, Minhi serves up pumpkin and yellow corn so sweet it can be eaten raw, though our mouths watered thinking about the abalone porridge and sea urchin soup.
That evening, back at JW Marriott, as I settled in for the night between satiny soft white sheets, my sun-warmed body still seemed to bob to the phantom sensation of that morning’s dive. I hadn’t gone too deep at all and I’d not collected a single shelled fish, but hand on heart, it was one of the most memorable things I’d ever done.
“You’re so lucky to have gone! Would you do it again?” the concierge had asked me when I stumbled happily back into the lobby.
“Does a chicken have lips?” I asked.
The Beophwan Haenyeo Experience Center is open from June to late October. Call +82 64 739 7508 to book, or have your hotel make the booking. The two-hour experience costs 30,000 KRW (S$31) per person (minimum two) and includes all equipment.