editorial

On the rocky shores of Jeju, a fresh generation of haenyeo “sea women” is breathing new life into the South Korean island’s centuries-old diving traditions.
Photographs by Mark Parren Taylor
<figure id="attachment_146932" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-146932" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-146932" src="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-Seongsan-Ilchulbong-mountain-and-coast.jpeg" alt="The northern flanks of Seongsan Ilchulbong mountain on Jeju Island." width="1200" height="793" srcset="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-Seongsan-Ilchulbong-mountain-and-coast.jpeg 1200w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-Seongsan-Ilchulbong-mountain-and-coast-300x198.jpeg 300w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-Seongsan-Ilchulbong-mountain-and-coast-1024x677.jpeg 1024w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-Seongsan-Ilchulbong-mountain-and-coast-768x508.jpeg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-146932" class="wp-caption-text">The northern flanks of Seongsan Ilchulbong mountain on Jeju Island.</figcaption></figure>
Planes fly in and out of Jeju like the waves that break nonstop against the island’s basalt shoreline. Most arrive from Seoul on what is officially the busiest airline route on the planet—a one-hour hop between <a href="https://destinasian.com/category/south-korea" target="_blank" rel="noopener">South Korea</a>’s pulsating capital and its most popular holiday destination. Tens of thousands of travelers touch down on Jeju every day. They come for the resorts, the amusement parks, the geological splendor, and the food: apart from its famed black pork and mandarin oranges, the island is a magnet for seafood lovers.
Historically, though, the “three abundances” (samda) Jeju was known for were wind, stone, and women, all of which still come together along the 258-kilometer-long coastline of this remarkable volcanic island south of the Korean Peninsula. For as much as the rocky soil and constant winds have shaped the local culture, so too has the traditional prevalence of women in a place where men were often lost at sea or conscripted during wars. And the heartiest of these women were—and still are—the haenyeo, Jeju’s famed female free divers.
Braving the cold, treacherous waters of the East China Sea in wetsuits and masks, these ladies work in small teams to harvest the seabed for conch, sea urchin, and abalone, which they sell to a cooperative that in turn supplies restaurants and fish markets both domestically and abroad. It’s a tradition that goes back to the 17th century, though the trade is dwindling fast as girls, who now have ready access to education, find less arduous ways of making a living. While it’s a proud and symbolic profession, being a haenyeo—literally, “woman of the sea”—is not very lucrative, especially considering the risks and physical demands. Today, Jeju has just 2,000 or so working divers, many of whom are in their 70s and even 80s.
So I’m surprised to encounter a younger generation of ladies intent on taking up the trade. One is Yue Jeong Lee, who recounts returning home from the mainland in 2019 after graduating in Chinese language studies, and making her parents cry when she announced she wished to become a haenyeo. “Your father is a fisherman but he has a refuge, the boat,” her mother had sobbed. “A haenyeo has no shelter, she must suffer whatever the elements throw at her.” But Lee was determined.
Five years on, she is a “hagun” haenyeo—an entry-level diver who sticks to waters shallower than 12 meters, and can gather up to 30 kilos of sea urchin and kelp on a typical day.
<figure id="attachment_146926" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-146926" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-146926" src="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-Abalone-hot-pot-rice-Yue-Jeong-Lee-outside-Haenyeo-gogi-restaurant.jpeg" alt="Jeonbok dolsotbap (hot-pot rice with abalone) is a classic Jeju dish; Yue Jeong Lee outside her restaurant, Haenyeo-gogi." width="1200" height="894" srcset="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-Abalone-hot-pot-rice-Yue-Jeong-Lee-outside-Haenyeo-gogi-restaurant.jpeg 1200w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-Abalone-hot-pot-rice-Yue-Jeong-Lee-outside-Haenyeo-gogi-restaurant-300x224.jpeg 300w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-Abalone-hot-pot-rice-Yue-Jeong-Lee-outside-Haenyeo-gogi-restaurant-1024x763.jpeg 1024w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-Abalone-hot-pot-rice-Yue-Jeong-Lee-outside-Haenyeo-gogi-restaurant-768x572.jpeg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-146926" class="wp-caption-text">Left to right: Jeonbok dolsotbap (hot-pot rice with abalone) is a classic Jeju dish; Yue Jeong Lee outside her restaurant, Haenyeo-gogi.</figcaption></figure>
<figure id="attachment_146927" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-146927" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-146927" src="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-Biyang-Island-haenyeo-on-a-boat.jpg" alt="Biyang Island haenyeo boating out to a dive spot." width="1200" height="800" srcset="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-Biyang-Island-haenyeo-on-a-boat.jpg 1200w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-Biyang-Island-haenyeo-on-a-boat-300x200.jpg 300w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-Biyang-Island-haenyeo-on-a-boat-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-Biyang-Island-haenyeo-on-a-boat-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-146927" class="wp-caption-text">Biyang Island haenyeo boating out to a dive spot.</figcaption></figure>
While training at the Hansupul Haenyeo School—one of two government-sponsored training centers on the island—Lee also worked toward fulfilling another dream: opening a restaurant. She now supplies some of her own harvest to her kitchen at Haenyeo-gogi in Jeju City, where the surf-and-turf menu features morning-caught seafood alongside barbecued black pork.
Sun Ae Go has a similar tale to tell. Born to a haenyeo mother on the tiny isle of Biyangdo off Jeju’s west coast, she moved across the water to Hallim town as a newlywed and opened her own restaurant. But Hallim looks out to her home island, and in the mornings Go would catch sight of taewak floats, some likely used by her mother and aunts. The pull was too strong. After a decade, she returned to Biyangdo in 1999 and paid the joining subscription of around 2 million won (nearly US$2,700 in today’s money) after persuading its haenyeo community to let her into the fold.
For generations, prospective haenyeo have been trained in basic skills like harvesting and breathing at eight or nine years old. They learn how to quickly exhale and inhale on resurfacing to create the whistle-like sumbisori sound. “It’s like a game,” Go says, “but I had to play that game again as a trainee aged 31!”
Today, at 57, she is the youngest team member and a middle-ranking “junggun” haenyeo, capable of diving to a depth of 13 meters while holding her breath for at least two minutes. Her passion for the work has only strengthened with the passage of time. “I’m so hungry for it. If I can’t get out, I get an itch, I get FOMO. I need to dive,” says Go, “and I want to beat the others too, to bring back the biggest sack of conch.”
<figure id="attachment_146928" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-146928" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-146928" src="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-Divers-in-the-water-Sun-Ae-Go.jpeg" alt="A team of haenyeo swimming out for the day; Sun Ae Go before an early morning dive off Biyang Island." width="1200" height="894" srcset="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-Divers-in-the-water-Sun-Ae-Go.jpeg 1200w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-Divers-in-the-water-Sun-Ae-Go-300x224.jpeg 300w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-Divers-in-the-water-Sun-Ae-Go-1024x763.jpeg 1024w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-Divers-in-the-water-Sun-Ae-Go-768x572.jpeg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-146928" class="wp-caption-text">Left to right: A team of haenyeo swimming out for the day; Sun Ae Go before an early morning dive off Biyang Island.</figcaption></figure>
<figure id="attachment_146925" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-146925" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-146925" src="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-A-taewak-float-and-diver-at-Sinheung-Beach.jpeg" alt="A float, or taewak, owned by diver Sun A Kim; a haenyeo treading carefully over the rocky shoreline at Sinheung Beach." width="1200" height="894" srcset="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-A-taewak-float-and-diver-at-Sinheung-Beach.jpeg 1200w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-A-taewak-float-and-diver-at-Sinheung-Beach-300x224.jpeg 300w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-A-taewak-float-and-diver-at-Sinheung-Beach-1024x763.jpeg 1024w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-A-taewak-float-and-diver-at-Sinheung-Beach-768x572.jpeg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-146925" class="wp-caption-text">Left to right: A float, or taewak, owned by diver Sun A Kim; a haenyeo treading carefully over the rocky shoreline at Sinheung Beach.</figcaption></figure>
Jeong Soon Lim laments the effect climate change has had on the harvest. In the nearly five decades she’s been diving, the top-ranking “sanggun” haenyeo has seen her catch shrink—from 100 kilograms a day in the aughties to half that or even less today. Lim juggles what one might call a “slash career”: at dawn she tends vegetables on her smallholding; dives to depths of 20 meters until midday; then dons her chef’s apron at Haenyeo Kitchen, a restaurant in the north-coast village of Bukchon where she shares anecdotes and sings shanties. “Our numbers are falling. We have to diversify and innovate,” she says.
Despite the threat of haenyeo culture disappearing altogether, there remains a stubborn expectation that younger recruits will rock the boat—or quit at the first sign of hard work. But the profession is finding favor with plucky transplants from the Korean mainland. Over on Jeju’s southern coast, the seven remaining members of the haenyeo team in Namwon village have put their trust in three novices at Beophwan Haenyeo School. Among them are 37-year-olds Sun A Kim, a former Seoulite drawn to the island lifestyle, and Hye Lim Shin, who has a small biotech business near Busan. Weary of her big-city existence, Shin moved to Jeju in 2023 to fulfil her lifelong dream of becoming a haenyeo. “My parents were worried for my safety,” she nods, “but their main concern was: ‘will you be happy?’”
Her mainland business runs itself these days, and the income stays across the strait. “That money doesn’t mix with my Jeju life. I get by on what I earn from diving &#8230; plus a part-time job that makes up for any shortfall,” Shin adds.
All the haenyeo I meet share a love of being underwater. “When I’m down there it’s stress-free. I’m not sure I think about anything,” Ryo Jin Ko says. Eleven years ago, Ko overcame postnatal depression and a divorce by following in the footsteps of her mother, Suk Lee Park, and grandmother to train as a haenyeo at age 29. Mother and daughter know she’s now in the right place. Their café in Pyeongdae village is widely respected for its seonggye guksu (sea urchin roe noodles)—so much so they must seek extra supplies from other diving teams to guarantee the 100 kilograms of roe needed daily.
Each working day for a haenyeo involves four to eight hours of aerobic-anaerobic exercise—a total system workout. Challenging as it is, they reap the health benefits of regular physical activity, and the sense of wellbeing that comes with belonging to a tight-knit community where age is no barrier. “They might be a little unsteady, a bit stiff in the joints,” Go had told me of the older members of her Biyangdo team, “but when they’re in the water they’re agile. They’re young again.”
<figure id="attachment_146930" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-146930" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-146930" src="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-Freshly-caught-conch-rapeseed-fields-below-Seongsan-Ilchulbong-mountain.jpeg" alt="Freshly caught conch at Biyang Island; a view over rapeseed fields to the flat summit of Seongsan Ilchulbong." width="1200" height="894" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-146930" class="wp-caption-text">Left to right: Freshly caught conch at Biyang Island; a view over rapeseed fields to the flat summit of Seongsan Ilchulbong.</figcaption></figure>
<figure id="attachment_146931" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-146931" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-146931" src="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-Inside-Haenyeo-gogi-restaurant-Suk-Lee-Park-and-Ryo-Jin-Ko.jpg" alt="Inside Jeju City’s Haenyeo-gogi restaurant; Suk Lee Park (left) and Ryo Jin Ko." width="1200" height="894" srcset="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-Inside-Haenyeo-gogi-restaurant-Suk-Lee-Park-and-Ryo-Jin-Ko.jpg 1200w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-Inside-Haenyeo-gogi-restaurant-Suk-Lee-Park-and-Ryo-Jin-Ko-300x224.jpg 300w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-Inside-Haenyeo-gogi-restaurant-Suk-Lee-Park-and-Ryo-Jin-Ko-1024x763.jpg 1024w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeju-Island-Female-Free-Divers-Inside-Haenyeo-gogi-restaurant-Suk-Lee-Park-and-Ryo-Jin-Ko-768x572.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-146931" class="wp-caption-text">Left to right: Inside Jeju City’s Haenyeo-gogi restaurant; Suk Lee Park (left) and Ryo Jin Ko.</figcaption></figure>
How to Do Jeju
GETTING THERE
Jeju International Airport welcomes multiple daily flights from Seoul and Busan, as well as direct services from Singapore and Hong Kong via <a href="https://www.flyscoot.com/en" target="_blank" rel="noopener" class="broken_link">Scoot</a> and <a href="https://www.hkexpress.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">HK Express</a>, respectively.
WHERE TO STAY
<a href="https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/cjuju-jw-marriott-jeju-resort-and-spa/overview/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">JW Marriott Jeju Resort &amp; Spa</a> 
With 197 rooms and a hot-spring spa, this relatively new resort occupies an expansive cliff-top estate on the island’s south coast (from US$780 a night).
ADDRESS BOOK
Haenyeo-gogi 
80 Gwawon-ro, Yeon-dong, Jeju City.
Pyeongdae Seonggye Guksu Noodle Restaurant 
1945-2 Pyeongdae-ri, Gujwa-eup, Jeju City.
<a href="https://en.haenyeokitchen.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Haenyeo Kitchen</a> 
1281 Bukchon-ri, Jocheon-eup, Jeju City.
This article originally appeared in the <a href="https://subscription.destinasian.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">June/July 2025</a> print issue of DestinAsian magazine (“Siren Song”). Buy a single issue or subscribe <a href="https://subscription.destinasian.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.

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