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A travel feature exploring the legacy of Haenyeo divers in Jeju, South Korea, who have harvested marine life without oxygen tanks for centuries. The article highlights the cultural significance of these elderly divers, their UNESCO status, and the unique volcanic landscape and culinary experiences of the island.
who’ve been harvesting marine life from Jeju’s waters, without the help of oxygen tanks, for centuries. In 2024, they were the subject of a documentary called, and they even enjoy a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage listing.
Many of them, still diving in their 70s and 80s, have attained celebrity status.on their morning dive beneath Seongsan Ilchulbong, an ancient volcanic peak. Around an iridescent, jade-green cove hemmed by sheer, basalt cliffs, more than 100 tourists jostle for photos as the elderly women wriggle into their wetsuits and a traditionalsong blasts from speakers.
“It’s about the hardships they’ve endured,” my guide whispers as we listen. Then the women slip into the water. One by one, they vanish below its surface to dive anywhere between 10 and 20 metres on a single breath, before resurfacing, up to two-and-a-half minutes later, holding aloft their haul of sea urchins, octopus and abalone.
This may be a daily tourist spectacle, but watching the women harvest the seafloor in this way, as generations of Jeju women have done before them, makes the hairs on my arms stand up. Sitting some 80 kilometres off the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula, self-governing Jeju is South Korea’s great island escape, beloved for its beaches, hiking trails and distinctive food and culture. Traditionally, it’s said to have three things in abundance: wind, women and stone.
And indeed, almost everything here seems shaped by volcanic rock, from traditional stone houses and walls to the hulking, carved figures that guard their entrances. Hallasan, South Korea’s highest mountain, rises from its centre, while ancient eruptions have left lava tubes, craters and basalt-strewn shores. At a restaurant overlooking the cove, we sample the haenyeo’s catch, a plate of raw sea creatures washed down with glasses of Jeju’s famously sweet tangerine juice, before a post-prandial hike up the peak.
Seongsan Ilchulbong is typically a sunrise spot, but that means a 4am start and the risk of sea fog swallowing the view. By early afternoon, the climb is tough in the heat but, from the lush crater rim, Jeju unfurls clearly below, the intensely blue Korea Strait meeting its patchwork of fields. Scattered among those fields are villages that preserve a much older Jeju.
Seongeup, on the island’s south-eastern side, is a living heritage village of thatched stone houses, shrines and low basalt walls dating back more than six centuries. We pass between twostatues, hand-carved volcanic-stone “grandfathers” traditionally regarded as guardians, and wind our way down an, one of the narrow lanes connecting to the main road.
“There’s a saying on Jeju,” says my guide: “‘Every road begins with anand leads to the world’. ” The name now belongs to Jeju’s 437-kilometre Olle Trail, whose 27 routes lace the island’s coast and countryside. , workwear Jeju islanders have dyed with persimmon juice for centuries, the tannins helping protect the cloth from sweat and dirt.
Nearby, signs advertise natural-dyeing and ceramics workshops, and I begin mentally designing a return trip, when I’ll stay in a traditional house, walk the Olle Trail, throw a few pots and dye my own cloth. For now, though, I’m due in the small village of Sehwa.
There I meet 34-year-old Ta-eum Kim, part of a new generation of young women choosing theprotesting exploitative seafood prices under Japanese colonial rule in the 1930s, before we walk to the bay where she dives.
“We don’t catch everything we see,” says Kim. Unlike industrial fishing that can scrape the ocean floor,gather their catch by hand, leaving undersized shellfish to grow.
“We take only what we need to earn a living so that the marine life in this ecosystem can continue to live as well. ”Kim’s words are still with me on my final morning on Jeju. So, too, is the sense that, for all South Korea’s associations with the hyper-modern, this island has something important to say about how we might live now: take only what you need. Work with, rather than against, nature.
With my back to the wind, I walk the coast from Hamdeok, the popular beach town in the island’s north-east. I pass astanding sentinel beside the path and walk on, the sea stretching blue and empty beside me. Advertisement
Jeju Island Haenyeo Divers South Korea UNESCO Heritage Volcanic Tourism
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