The Truth About Asia’s Real-Life Mermaids Is Stranger Than Fiction

Dressed in wetsuits and carrying sharp knives, these women look as though they could be extras in a James Bond movie. But in reality, they are practicing an expert skill passed down from their mothers and grandmothers to the modern day. Unconstrained by artificial breathing apparatus, they quickly disappear beneath the surface — and remain there for minutes at a time.

Decades ago, there were tens of thousands of haenyeo living and working in the island province of Jeju. But now, they have all but disappeared. Will inclusion on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage List save them from extinction? Or will they simply fade away, yet another custom lost to the passage of time?

To an outsider, the sight of an elderly Korean woman plunging into the deep ocean with little more than her wits to protect her might seem startling to say the least. And despite its long history, the practice is not without its risks. But the harvest that the haenyeo bring to the surface sustains their families, giving them a unique status in a country typically dominated by men. 

Located in the Korea Strait some 50 miles off the South Korean coast, the sprawling Jeju Island represents almost 2 percent of the country’s total land mass. And as a result, it’s home to more than half a million people. But this sleepy island couldn’t be further away from the bustling streets and high-rises of cities such as Seoul.

In fact, visitors come from all over to enjoy the subtropical climate and laid-back atmosphere of Jeju. But there is one aspect to the island that makes it a little different to your typical tourist destination. Here, it’s possible to spot traditional female divers known as haenyeo engaged in their fascinating occupation. 

Amazingly, people have been diving in the waters off Jeju for more than 1,500 years. For centuries, though, it was men who braved the world beneath the waves, fishing for molluscs and seaweed on the ocean floor. But at some point in history, women cast aside their traditional roles and joined their husbands and fathers in their underwater pursuits.

According to reports, the first written mention of Jeju’s female divers came in the 1600s. But by the following century, the population of haenyeo — or sea women — had exploded. In fact, in the 1700s, there were more female divers on the island than male. So what brought about this unusual shift?

Traditionally, South Korea is a patriarchal society, with rigid definitions of gender-based roles. And hundreds of years ago, the idea that women belonged in the home would have been even more pervasive than it is today. So how did the haenyeo become breadwinners and important members of the community in 18th-century Jeju?

According to some, the 17th century saw a great number of deaths within the male population of Jeju, either through military conflicts or marine fishing catastrophes. Without husbands, fathers, or sons to feed them, then, the women of the island began diving for seafood instead. And over time, the practice became a female-dominated profession.

Meanwhile, others have pointed out that women are physiologically more suited than men to diving in cold water, having a naturally higher percentage of body fat. Reportedly, they also start shivering at lower temperatures too. And as a result, they are less likely to suffer in the often-chilly waters of the Korea Strait.

Finally, a third explanation has been suggested for the haenyeo: that after many men went away to war, the king of Korea continued to demand taxes from struggling households. And with no other option, the women of Jeju began diving for valuable abalone. According to legend, some of them were even heavily pregnant at the time.

Today, the haenyeo continue to fish for abalone — as well as conches, squid, and other species of marine life. Armed with sharp knives, they dive to depths of up to 30 feet in search of their prey, often spending as long as two minutes underwater. Once successful, they swim back up to the surface, where they deposit their catch into a net attached to a float.

To begin with, haenyeo dressed in swimsuits made from cotton and could only stay in the sea for about 60 minutes during the winter months. But later, with the invention of wetsuits, they were able to extend their working days. Now, the divers often spend as long as six hours in the water, even in the coldest of weather.

Of course, such an extreme profession is not without its dangers. When David Alan Harvey, a photographer for National Geographic magazine, traveled to Jeju in 2014 to document the haenyeo, he was informed that two of the divers had recently been killed. In fact, marine creatures such as sharks and jellyfish pose a constant danger, as does the sometimes perilous weather of the Korea Strait.

Despite these challenges, though, the haenyeo thrived. According to UNESCO, there are three different categories of haenyeo: the sanggun, who are the most experienced, followed by the junggun and the hagun. And before each dive, they perform a ritual known as Jamsugut, a shamanic prayer to ensure their safety underwater.

At first, reports claim, most of the haenyeo’s harvest was offered to the king as a form of tribute. But all that changed in 1910 when the Japanese arrived in Korea. Doing away with the old tradition, they introduced the divers to capitalism, allowing them to start making wages from their catch.

But the haenyeo weren’t just making money as freelancers during the Japanese occupation. At the time, many were hired by the colonizers to work as laborers on the mainland. And as a result, they gained a level of financial independence previously unheard of in Korea’s strictly patriarchal society, sometimes earning roughly half of their household’s total income. 

On August 15, 1945, Japan announced its surrender to the Allies in World War II and the country’s troops began retreating from Korean soil. But the elevated status that the haenyeo had enjoyed under the occupation remained. And in the isolated community of Jeju, a matriarchal society of sorts began to emerge.

On tiny Mara Island off the coast of Jeju, for example, haenyeo became the sole earners of their households, leaving the men to stay home and fulfil domestic roles. And even today, it is known as a society dominated by independent women. In most places, though, the success of the female divers was not enough to completely topple the dominant patriarchy.

In many cases, haenyeo were so successful that their husbands didn’t need to earn their own wages. But while some of them stepped up to the tasks of housework and childcare in their wives’ steads, records suggest that many did not. And often, women were still expected to perform their domestic duties after returning from a day at sea.

On top of that, much of the structure of Korean society remained the same on Jeju. Outside of the home, women were still treated as second-class citizens, barred from holding public office or inheriting their families’ estates. And largely speaking, the haenyeo remained confined to the lowest rungs of the social ladder.

By the 1960s, it’s believed that there were around 20,000 practicing haenyeo on Jeju. But then things began to change. As the Korean government sought to industrialize the country, mandarin orange farms sprang up across the island. Attracted by the regular wages, many rural workers that would otherwise have become divers pursued a different path.

For those that remained, the 1970s brought a temporary boom as Japan began buying huge quantities of seafood from Jeju. But as the haenyeo became high-earners, they sent their children to better schools. And as the women of the island grew more educated, they set their sights on more urban careers. 

Meanwhile, the Korean government was busy developing tourism on Jeju. And by the late 1970s it was the biggest industry on the island, offering another alternative to the challenging and dangerous work of the haenyeo. By the time that Hyung S. Kim, a photographer from Seoul, arrived on the island in 2012 their numbers had dwindled to just 2,500.

On top of that, Kim found that most of the remaining haenyeo were over 60 years old, with one 90-year-old woman still donning her wetsuit and diving into the ocean. And even the youngest among them was almost in her 40th year. The sea women, then, appear to be a dying breed. 

In 2016 the haenyeo were added to UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. But while this inclusion might help to preserve some elements of the culture, the future looks bleak. And many believe that there will be none of them left on Jeju a few decades from now.

In 2017 the website KOREA.net published an interview with Lee Mae-chun, a haenyeo living on Jeju. Having entered the profession as a young teenager, she was still diving almost six decades later at the ripe age of 72. But she revealed just how much things had changed during that time — and how she expected the culture to soon disappear.

“[In the past] it was easy to find seaweed and to sell it, but nowadays it’s hard to find,” Mae-chun explained. “Abalone was also easy to spot and to collect, but these days, no more. I still remember the excitement of catching a lot of abalone during one dive. Abalone was very valuable and you could earn good money for it.”

As a young woman, Mae-chun traveled to Japan where she was taught how to use an oxygen tank to extend her time in the water. But when she returned to Jeju she reverted to the traditional haenyeo style, diving without the assistance of any bulky equipment. And since then, she has spent her life working all around Korea.

“When I started, we didn’t have proper suits or inner red cotton clothing, nebok long underwear for the winter, and all we wore was a cotton suit, so it was always very cold,” Mae-chun added. “If your body and your health weren't strong enough, you couldn't have done this job.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by Chae Ji-ae, one of Jeju’s youngest haenyeo. The daughter of a female diver, she left the island many years ago to work as a hair stylist on the mainland. But when the time came to raise her own children, she decided to leave the bustle of Seoul and return home to follow in her mother’s footsteps.

In 2016 Ji-ae told local newspaper The Jeju Weekly that at first she’d expected the job to be easy. After all, she'd reasoned, women in their 80s still managed to work as haenyeo. So surely a fit 30-something would not struggle to keep up? Once she began her training, though, she realized just how challenging the work of the sea women really was.

Ji-ae works a grueling schedule as a haenyeo, spending as many as 18 days a month at sea. And each time, she must battle against strong currents and dangerous tides to bring in her valuable catch. But despite all this, she told The Jeju Weekly that she was happy that she had chosen this new life.

Meanwhile, Mae-chun agreed that the younger generation were not always aware of the difficult challenges faced by the sea women. She recalled, “Once my daughter-in-law had the opportunity to work as a haenyeo during her free time, and she realized how hard it was and that it's a job that can't be done part-time.”

“In order to become a haenyeo, you need to know everything about the island and the sea around it, the wind movements and all of that,” Mae-chun continued. “These are things that you only learn if you start at a young age and they aren’t something you can learn over a short period of time or as a hobby.”

Recently, Mae-chun admitted, she only went out diving when the sea was warm and conditions were good. But there were still haenyeo who head to sea in all weathers — for the moment at least. According to her son, though, the diver believed that her profession would disappear “over the next 20 years or so.”

But if the haenyeo do eventually vanish from Jeju, they have at least been forever immortalized in popular culture. As well as several photo essays documenting the female divers, the profession has cropped up in several movies and TV shows over the years. Meanwhile everything from novels to songs have retold the story of these inspiring women.

Now, the haenyeo are becoming more famous than ever before, thanks to the growing popularity of Korean dramas around the world. And it’s this notoriety that may save them yet. In Japan, the female sea pearl divers known as ama have become a tourist attraction, drawing plenty of visitors to their island home.

For the moment at least, Korea’s haenyeo seem wary of publicity, treating visiting journalists with healthy suspicion. But will they eventually succumb to the same fate as the ama, preserved for the sole purpose of keeping tourists entertained? Or will they simply disappear, their singular talent and skill becoming little more than a memory for the people of Jeju?