TRAVEL

On Jeju Island, a new generation of South Korean 'mermaids' emerges

These are the stories of South Korea’s 'mermaids', who for centuries have braved the harsh conditions to harvest shellfish.

On the island of Jeju, resourceful haenyeo 'sea-women' have braved riptides harvesting urchins and other shellfish to put food on the table.
Photograph by Mark Parren Taylor

Story and photographs byMark Parren Taylor

November 5, 2024

This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).

Born from volcanic fury, Jeju Island in the far south has been compared to Hawaii for its azure waters and popularity with local honeymooners. But for ordinary islanders, it can be hard to make ends meet on this outpost 50 miles from the mainland. The resourceful capitalise on its natural larder, and for centuries the haenyeo ‘sea women’ have braved riptides harvesting urchins and other shellfish to put food on the table. When new, less arduous career opportunities arose in the 1980s and 1990s, their numbers dwindled, and the remaining haenyeo are now mostly into their seventies. But lately, there has been a resurgence of interest in this daunting job.

Siren song

Go Sun-ae grew up on Biyangdo, a small island just off Jeju’s northwest shore — “a place where everyone fishes or dives,” she says. She initially carved out a life on land, as her haenyeo mother was not keen on her following in her footsteps. Aged 20, she married and moved to Hallim on Jeju.
Photograph by Mark Parren Taylor (Top) (Left) and Photograph by Mark Parren Taylor (Bottom) (Right)

ocean — The port town overlooks Biyangdo, and with her native island always in view, becoming a haenyeo was on her mind. For safety, the haenyeo work as part of a team, of which there are dozens across Jeju, and a decade later she convinced her mother’s teammates to endorse her. She set out alongside them in 1998.
Photograph by Mark Parren Taylor

woman holding fishing net — Today, she’s 55 and a junggun (middle-tier) haenyeo — the youngest on Biyangdo. “Some of the women are getting on,” she says, “one is just shy of 90. At the start of the day, backs are stiff and knees play up. But when they’re in the water, suddenly they’re young again.” Go Sun-ae believes their vitality is rooted in competitiveness. “The best days are when you bring back the biggest load. Yesterday my net weighed 130lb.”
Photograph by Mark Parren Taylor

Rocking the boat

woman cooking — Lee Yu-jeong’s mother, a farmer, sobbed for days when told her daughter wanted to be a haenyeo. Her father is a fisherman, but his boat provides refuge from the elements. “You’re at the mercy of the sea,” her mother told her. “It’s unpredictable, you have no shelter.” But Lee Yu-jeong had a plan: to fuse her two dreams into a fulfilling ‘surf-and-turf’ career. And so, alongside diving, she now runs a barbecue restaurant in southwestern Jeju City.
Photograph by Mark Parren Taylor

sea urchin — aenyeo-gogi (‘Haenyeo Meat’) offers novel twists on traditional island cuisine: the freshest seafood she can harvest alongside pork from Jeju Black, a native breed of dark-skinned pigs. It’s now been five years since she graduated, aged 31, from the Hansupul Haenyeo School — one of two government-sponsored training centres. The school takes just 30 students each year on its professional divers’ course, and applicants must then secure the endorsement of every member to join a haenyeo team. “The established divers sometimes see newbies as a threat — it can take effort to convince sceptics that you’ll be a dependable colleague, that you won’t take an unfair share of the day’s haul — that you won’t rock the boat.”
Photograph by Mark Parren Taylor

Family values

mother and daughter — Headstrong and independent, Ko Ryo-jin trained herself to be a haenyeo. With a story that echoes both her mother’s and grandmother’s, the 39-year-old hadn’t thought about diving until well into her twenties. Her mother Pak Suk-lee (also self-taught) suggested it as a therapeutic distraction after Ko Ryo-jin suffered a bout of depression a decade ago.
Photograph by Mark Parren Taylor

It was a revelation — and spurred her to both establish herself as a licensed haenyeo and open a jointly owned restaurant, Pyeongdae Seongge Guksu. It’s named for the noodle dish it specialises in — featuring sea urchin (seongge) roe — and there are long queues for a place at one of the six tables.
Photograph by Mark Parren Taylor (Top) (Left) and Photograph by Mark Parren Taylor (Bottom) (Right)

Early riser

Lim Jeong-soon juggles jobs. After a 6am start to tend to her smallholding with her husband, the 66-year-old pulls on her wetsuit and dives for up to six hours for conch, abalone and sea urchins. Later in the day, she reaches for her apron at Haenyeo Kitchen, a restaurant in Bukchon village on the northeast coast, where she is head chef. Sometimes in her role here, she tells tales of the ocean to diners, wearing the traditional white, woven haenyeo tunic.
Photograph by Mark Parren Taylor

woman carrying seaurchins and shells — Despite starting as a haenyeo relatively late in life, aged 20, she soon reached the top-tier sanggun status. Top-tier haenyeo are able to dive to depths of 20m on a single breath that can last as long as five minutes. Lim Jeong-soon is the youngest of five siblings, and her mother and sisters were all divers. They urged her from an early age to follow a different path, but she had limited options and a young family to feed. These days, her two adult sons no longer depend on her, so the money she earns from diving goes further.
Photograph by Mark Parren Taylor

New beginnings

women carrying sea urchins — “At first I was reluctant to tell people I’d trained as a haenyeo,” 36-year-old Shin Hye-lim admits, “in case they thought my biotech venture on the mainland was a failure.” She moved to Jeju a couple of years ago in response to a growing yearning for a more mindful, non-consumerist lifestyle. “My parents were concerned for my safety,” she says, “but more than anything they just want me to be happy.”
Photograph by Mark Parren Taylor

women swimming — As part of her training at Beophwan Haenyeo School, she interned with a small team in Namwon village, which lies some nine miles east of Jeju’s second city of Seogwipo, on the southern coast. With them, she learned to use handfuls of mugwort leaves to wipe the inside of her goggles— partly to stop them fogging, she says, and partly for the relaxing herbal smell. The internship was for three months, but she’s still here a year on and now settling in for the long haul. She says: “This is my home, I’m an islander now.”
Photograph by Mark Parren Taylor

Published in the South Korea guide, distributed with the November 2024 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK).

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