Latest news with #haenyeo
South China Morning Post
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Actress Song Ji-hyo says ‘My mental strength broke down' making free diver documentary
Actress Song Ji-hyo takes on the challenge of becoming a haenyeo, a woman free diver who harvests seafood, on South Korea's Jeju Island in the JTBC-BBC joint documentary series Deep Dive Korea: Song Ji-hyo's Haenyeo Adventure. Advertisement In the three-part documentary, Song – best known for her appearance in Korea's longest-running variety show, Running Man – free dives alongside the veteran female divers with whom she shares a unique bond. Jeju's haenyeo culture, with a history dating back at least 400 years , was recognised for its unique cultural value and was listed as part of Unesco's Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2016. They are women who, even into their eighties, dive as deep as 20 metres (66 feet) without oxygen masks or modern equipment to collect shellfish to support both their families and their way of life. Recently, the Netflix series When Life Gives You Tangerines featured the story of the haenyeo, drawing significant public interest. The actress, whose aunt was a haenyeo, recalled the moment she received the project proposal. 'I immediately felt like it was meant for me. I wanted to do it so much that I hoped no one else would take it if I couldn't,' she said this week. Advertisement 'Even though I've been on Running Man for over 10 years, I wasn't finding much joy in the set, in acting or in my own life. I started to question whether I should keep acting in the same routine.
The Guardian
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
South Korea's female freedivers: TV has made stars of the haenyeo but what is their real story?
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
RNZ News
08-05-2025
- Science
- RNZ News
Did South Korea's legendary female free divers evolve for a life underwater? Scientists find new evidence
By Katie Hunt, CNN A file image of South Korean haenyeo entering the water to catch turban shells and abalones in Jeju, South Korea. Photo: Getty Images / Chung Sung-Jun These women dive year-round off Jeju Island, collecting sea urchins, abalone and other seafood from the ocean floor, descending as much as 18 metres beneath the surface multiple times over the course of four to five hours each day. They dive throughout pregnancy and well into old age, without the help of any breathing equipment - just a wet suit. "For thousands of years, we think, they've been doing this incredible, matrilineal thing, where they learn from the mother how to dive at a very young age. They go out in these collectives, and that's what they do. They dive," said Melissa Ann Ilardo, a geneticist and assistant professor in biomedical informatics at the University of Utah. "They're spending really an extraordinary percentage of their time underwater." Ilardo, along with colleagues in South Korea, Denmark and the United States, wanted to understand how the women manage this incredible physical feat. Specifically, the researchers wondered whether the divers have unique DNA that allows them to go without oxygen for so long or if that ability is the result of a lifetime of training - or a combination of the two. Research is trying to understand how the women are able to spend to much time underwater all year round. (File pic) Photo: Getty Images / Chung Sung-Jun The findings of their investigation, published in the scientific journal Cell Reports on 2 May, uncovered unique genetic differences the Haenyeo have evolved to cope with the physiological stress of free diving. It's a discovery that could one day lead to better treatments for blood pressure disorders, researchers say. "It's a beautiful island, like sometimes they call it the Hawaii of Korea. There's this coastline everywhere that's rich with great resources, so you can imagine any population living in a place like that of course you would want to take advantage of it," Ilardo said. Diving has been part of Jeju culture for many years. It's unclear at what point it became a women-only activity, but theories include a tax on male divers or a shortage of men, Ilardo said. Still, diving is so integral to Jeju's population that the shortening of words characteristic of the Jeju language is attributed to the need for divers to communicate quickly, according to the new study. However, the practice is dying out. Young women are no longer continuing this matrilineal tradition; the current group of Haenyeo divers, with an average age of around 70 years, may represent the last generation, the researchers noted in the study. For their research, Ilardo and her colleagues recruited 30 Haenyeo divers, 30 non-diving women from Jeju and 31 women from the South Korean mainland. The average age of the participants was 65. The researchers compared participants' heart rates, blood pressure and spleen sizes and sequenced their genomes - a detailed genetic blueprint - from blood samples. The study's biggest challenge was safely replicating the physical stress of being underwater for relatively long periods for participants with no diving experience, Ilardo noted. The researchers solved this problem by conducting simulated dives, during which participants held their breath while submerging their faces in cold water. "We would have loved to collect these measurements from everyone in the open ocean, but obviously you can't ask 65-(year-old), 67-year-old women who have never dived before in their lives to hop in the water and hold their breath and dive," Ilardo said. "Fortunately, if you hold your breath and put your face in a bowl full of cold water, your body responds as if you're diving. And that's because the nerve that stimulates the mammalian dive reflex goes through your face," she said. When you feel the cold water combined with the breath hold, "your body says, 'oh I'm diving': So your heart rate slows down, your blood pressure increases and your spleen contracts," she added. The team's analysis revealed that the participants from Jeju - both divers and non-divers - were more than four times more likely than mainland Koreans to have a genetic variant associated with lower blood pressure. "Your blood pressure increases as you dive. Their (Jeju residents') blood pressure increases less," Ilardo explained. The researchers believe the trait may possibly have evolved to keep unborn children safe because the Haenyeo dive throughout pregnancy, when high blood pressure can be dangerous. The team also found that the Jeju participants were more likely to have a genetic variation previous research has linked to cold and pain tolerance. However, the researchers did not measure the participants' ability to withstand low temperatures, so they can't say for sure whether the variant may be important for the Haenyeo's ability to dive year-round. "Throughout winter they're diving when it's snowing, and up until the 1980s, they were doing that in cotton with no protection at all. There's a lot more that we need to explore and find the answers to," Ilardo said. The Haenyeo's diving prowess didn't come down to genetics alone. The study also found that the female divers had a slower heart rate than non-divers during the tests - a factor that would help them to conserve oxygen during a dive. "It was quite dramatic. Actually, their heart rate dropped about 50 percent more over the course of the dive than the control (participants). We know that it's because of training, because it's something that we only saw in the Haenyeo," Ilardo said. Ilardo's previous work involving free diving communities known as the Bajau in Sulawesi, Indonesia, had revealed genetic adaptations that allowed the Bajau to go for longer periods without oxygen, resulting in unusually large spleens. However, while Jeju residents did, on average, have a larger spleen than the study participants from mainland South Korea, the effect wasn't significant when other factors like age, height and weight were accounted for, she said. The genetic variant that the study identified in the Jeju residents associated with lower blood pressure should be explored further, according to Ben Trumble, an associate professor at Arizona State University's School of Human Evolution and Social Change. "Those with this gene had more than a 10 percent reduction in blood pressure compared to those who don't have this gene, that's a pretty impressive effect," said Trumble, who wasn't involved in the study. "Genes code for proteins, and if we can figure out which changes in proteins impact blood pressure, we could potentially create new drugs." Nearly all medical and genetic studies are conducted in industrialised populations, usually in urban city centres, making Ilardo's approach particularly valuable, Trumble added. "Almost everything we know about what is 'normal' when it comes to health is from these sedentary urban populations. However, for 99.9 percent of human history, we were hunter-gatherers," he said. "Natural selection optimised our bodies under very different selective pressures than those we face today." Ilardo said she hopes to continue to study Jeju's female divers and get a deeper understanding of the medical implications. "This study raises more questions than it answers, but first and foremost, it shows these women are extraordinary," she said. "There's something biologically different about them that makes them extremely special, no matter how you characterise it, and what they do is unique and worth celebrating." -CNN
Daily Mail
06-05-2025
- Daily Mail
I visited Jeju Island in South Korea, where you can feast with booze for £20 a head and meet 70-year-old women who freedive for a living
I'm standing on a black lava beach besides a huge, natural, rocky volcanic sea-castle, talking to a 70 year old free-diving fisherwoman called Nari about her latest catch of conch, sea-slugs and abalone. She's telling me that the best place to eat them (in a spicy and delicious sauce) is in the seafood restaurant right behind me, lodged between the Pie Shop (named: 'Pie Shop'), next to the shamanic ritual temple, the inevitable 7/11, not far from the Sex Museum. And if all that sounds a bit unlikely, then so it should: because I am chatting with one of the haenyeo, the female seafisherfolk of Jeju – an island (population 600,000, pronounced Jay-Joo) off the south coast of Korea, a place which simultaneously manages to be beautiful, ugly, unique, peculiar, and always compelling. It's like an Iceland paired with a Seychelle half-covered in suburban Los Angeles and – some say, it is the most weirdly Korean place in Korea. It is also the most popular domestic destination for Koreans, who love its fine subtropical beaches for swimming and surfing, and its historic villages, plush resorts, UNESCO-listed lava tubes, boutique hotels, and its many brilliant hiking trails in undulant forests. All of which benefit from an accessibly mild climate when the rest of Korea freezes. Jeju is properly hot in summer. Indeed, such is the appeal of Jeju in these parts, Seoul-Jeju is the single most popular air corridor in the world – making Jeju a brilliant, accessible diversion if you have a few days stopover in Seoul. That's exactly what I did. Two days ago I was wandering Seoul's ginseng alleys, herbal emporiums and epic seafood markets, its futuristic museums and its antique palaces. I also made sure to enjoy Seoul's frenetic, neon-lit nightlife in places like buzzy, studenty Hongdae, or south of the river around Gangnam (yes, that Gangnam) where uppercrust Koreans flaunt their wealth, while young, beautiful and businesslike Koreans dream up their K-pop. But now here I am, after just a 50 minute flight, in celebrated Jeju – and with a hire car, because Jeju is not small. On the upside, it is cheap: you can feast with booze for £20. The history of Jeju explains its unique status. For a long time it was not quite Korean, even as Koreans craved the place. It is also culturally unique: with elements of a matriarchal society. Hence perhaps the diving women – as Nari says to me, with a mischievous grin, 'all the men disappeared in the 18th century, to go to war - or maybe they are just a bit useless'. Likewise, the language has a dialect of its own, and those shamanic rituals have sincerely persisted - you might catch one in a rural village. Look for enigmatic statues of frowning men; known as 'grandfather statues', they date back hundreds of years and they protect each settlement from evil forces (sometimes much needed, the Japanese did bad things here in the 30s and 40s, and the brutal Korean War didn't skip the isle). The day ends in a suitably atmospheric Jeju spot, in the island's glittering, surf-crashed far west. Some of the female freedivers that Sean met, such as the one pictured, are world famous for their ability to swim without oxygen tanks Here, colossal windmills march toward the sea like exercising giants, their arms gyrating in Jeju's frequent gusts (best find sheltered coasts in these conditions). As the sun sinks low, the warm wind dies away, and an ancient stillness descends over the nearest 7/11. Then I spy a neon sign of a spider crab above a cozy gastropub, beckoning me in for more excellent shellfish - perhaps caught this morning by a 79-year-old woman in a wetsuit. Which is totally Jeju.
