The Mermaids of Jeju – Korean Female Divers Haenyeo

Have you ever heard the story of mermaids living on beautiful Jeju Island, off the coast of Korea? While driving along Jeju’s coastline, you might have come across one of them swimming amongst the black rocks. As you walked along the beach with your love, you may have spotted them coming to the surface, whistling for a breath of air. What would it be like to actually meet one of those mermaids? or Korean female divers. What do they do? Unlike fishermen who go out in boats or use a rod or line, these women dive in the ocean without any special tools to gather clams, abalone, or seaweed. And they don’t go as fully equipped as scuba divers. All they need is a float to mark their location when they surface, a weeding hoe to dig up abalone and other shellfish that cling to the rocks, and a net to hold their catch. Wearing a lead-weighted vest and goggles, they plunge into the 20-meter depths where they stay underwater holding their breath for two or three minutes. They are so adapted to life beneath the sea, they actually could be mermaids. Once they come back to the surface, they make a whistling sound, which is their unique way of breathing out the carbon dioxide and breathing in fresh oxygen. Traditionally, Koreans have aspired to have baby boys, because only a man was considered to be the head of a family, but Jeju was different. Here, the birth of a baby girl was so valued that the saying goes: “Have a baby girl, and we will throw a pork barbecue party; have a baby boy, and we will kick his ass.” Since it was the women who worked from morning till night every day, women held a special place in Jeju’s society. In the past, island girls began gathering clams or abalone by the time they were ten years old. They would dive between six to seven hours a day, but also do farm chores. The common routine was to do farm work, go diving, and then go back to do more farm work. Because of the grueling daily life, female divers had a saying: “Better to be born a cow than a woman.” The life of a haenyeo was not necessarily unhappy, though.