Korea’s Jeju Women Fight for Survival Against Climate Change

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, INTERNATIONAL HOST: Well, as we’ve been discussing, often the worst effects of climate change are experienced by those who contribute to it the least. And no one feels this more deeply than the Haenyeo women of Jeju Island off South Korea. This community of women has been diving for generations. And they’ve witnessed firsthand how the climate crisis is destroying the very sea and ecosystem they depend on. It’s putting everything they know and love at great risk. As Hari Sreenivasan discovered when he went to speak with these women on Jeju, here’s their remarkable conversation.

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HARI SREENIVASAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, now, for people who don’t know what Haenyeo is or what Haenyeo does, can you explain?

KIM EUNA, WOLJEONG-RI HAENYEO ASSOCIATION, JEJU ISLAND (through translator): A Haenyeo is a woman who dives into the ocean without using any diving equipment, relying solely on her body to breathe. She does this to gather sea life from the bottom of the ocean in order to sell them in the market to make a living. It’s an occupation.

SREENIVASAN: So many women in your family were Haenyeo. What does it mean to you? What does it mean to your family?

JEONG SUN-NYO, GANGJEONG MISSION CENTER, JEJU ISLAND (through translator): It means saving your family. It means giving up your life and your last breath for your family. When you walk around the Jeju villages, you hear the sounds of Sumbi-sori – breathing sounds. They’re the sounds of Haenyeos coming up for air after diving and gathering sea life. The breathing sounds are strong and carrying, so the Haenyeos diving together can recognize each other’s breathing sounds. If the breath sound doesn’t come out, there’s been an accident. If you swallow the water, you will die. All the Haenyeos immediately recognize the troubled sounds and go together as one to rescue the diver. So, being a Haenyeo is a profession where you give your life to save your family. You take in a deep breath and then expel the air before you dive in. This exhale is called Jus-Sseung – The World Beyond. After holding your breath while gathering the seafood, you come up for air, this first breath signifies being alive, it’s called Yi-Sseung – heaven. Navigating these two worlds of heal and heaven is the job of a Haenyeo.

SREENIVASAN: They don’t dive every day. They don’t dive in the same location all the time. There seems to be a method and a sustainability built into the Haenyeo culture.

KIM (through translator): The first thing I learned from Haenyeo grandmother and my Haenyeo mom is that you can’t get greedy in the sea. It means to not put yourself in danger by holding your breath for longer than you have to in order to gram more sea life to sell. It also means to not take too much from nature, for sustainability’s sake, in order to fulfill your greed. Haenyeos, we don’t dive with oxygen tanks, we only rely on our bodies’ oxygen capacity, so we limit ourselves to how much our body can carry. Haenyeos don’t dive every day. There’s a promise that we make, depending on the tides, if the waves are too strong, and depending on the weather, there’s a promise amongst each other that we’ll take a look at all these factors and debate together on whether to go diving or not. We also don’t let each other go into the ocean at any time we want. A big part of this collaborative culture is to protect the environment.

SREENIVASAN: Yesterday, I heard from an 87-year-old Haenyeo, Sum Chun (ph), she rode up on her scooter. And one of the things she said was that she has been diving since she was 15 years old. And what she saw in the sea is not there anymore.

HYUM BOK-RYE, WOLJEONG-RI HAENYEO ASSOCIATION, JEJU ISLAND (through translator): From my grandmother, she was a Haenyeo, and my mother was a Haenyeo. And I’m a Haenyeo. We are three generations of Haenyeos. Yes, I still go out to the sea to dive. But I’m thinking of retiring this year. In the past, there was plenty of abalone, cockles, and seaweed even near the shore. Now, there isn’t much sea life and seaweed anymore, so Haenyeos don’t go into the ocean. There is nothing left for us to gather. It’s different from even two to three years ago. In my 50s, the environment was very different, there were so many clams and conch. Sea life was very abundant. But now there’s nothing, nothing. The sea is dying. There’s nothing for the Haenyeos. The Jeju Sea is dying. My grandmother was able to provide for her family as a Haenyeo, because of the abundance of sea life that she was able to see in the markets. You ask, will it get better? It has to get better, or the Haenyeos will die off. It has to get better soon, but I don’t have much hope.

KIM (through translator): The ocean is no longer abundant. The water is getting dirtier and starting to rot. The Haenyeos are saying the sea is dying. Haenyeos feel that something dangerous is looming and they don’t see the future. And Haenyeos fell that if the sea dies, their life will also die. They anticipate this every day. The ocean surrounding Woljeong village and all of the Jeju Island was very abundant. Now it smells putrid, it’s full of trash. And with the increase of tourism and the development of tall buildings and sewage treatment plants, we are witnessing the devastation of the ocean and feel the quick rate of change on a daily basis.

SREENIVASAN: Right now, you spend time inside and outside a shipping container on a road. You’re protesting, setting up a barricade. What is that for?

KIM (through translator): A sewage treatment plant has been operating in our village for the last 30 years. As I mentioned, because of the development of Jeju Island for tourism, the infrastructure has expanded, including larger water treatment systems in the village. They’re aiming for a second expansion certification for the construction rights of additional sewage systems. The Haenyeos have been opposing this. These water treatment plants are actually sewage plants. This waster is being pumped into the sea, the place where Haenyeos dive for seafood and for their livelihood. This is how they were able to see and experience the changes for themselves, changes to the sea life, and the damage it was causing to the Woljeong Village and Jeju Island Sea. The Haenyeos couldn’t sit back and watch the changing and deteriorating environment. They’re now investing their time and efforts in protesting these developments that do irreparable damage. I realized that if we don’t save the sea, it will be destroyed forever. That’s why I joined this fight. While I can’t earn a living because I’m spending my time protesting every day, I can always recoup my earnings or find another job later. But if we let the sea die like this, you can’t revive the nature, once it’s damaged, the sea is gone forever. It’s this belief that keeps me in the fight and why I started protesting with the Haenyeos.

SREENIVASAN: You can protest rapid development. You can protest a navy base. You can attempt to make change with what’s happening here on the ground. How do you change what’s happening to the sea because of climate change, forces that were all contributing to?

JEONG (through translator): Before COVID, you couldn’t breathe because of the pollution, the sky was covered in fumes from the airplanes, to the point that you couldn’t see the sky. As soon as COVID started, the airplanes stopped flying, tourism stopped. We could breathe again, the sky cleared up, we could see the stars and we felt like we were human again. If people can course correct a little, we can create a world where we can live and let nature live as well. I felt this way up to last year. But stating this year, as COVID ended, we’re back to where we were before, we see the same problems in the ocean returning. Before the military base was constructed, you could see abundant sea life in the water, even 10 years ago. When I was younger, we could predict what sea life products we would collect by the basket during the four seasons each year. We knew what type of sea life we could collect in the winter and in the spring. We always brought up a basket full of sea life. Now there’s nothing, absolutely nothing. Eerily nothing. If by chance, we do catch a little something in the sea and eat it, we immediately get sick. There’s no plant life or sea life in the ocean, and the whole Jeju Sea is decaying. We wish for less people to visit, to stop the very cheap flights to Jeju, but rather offer more expensive flights, that match and reflect the value we place in nurturing the natural resources of Jeju Island.

SREENIVASAN: The number of Haenyeo is decreasing every year. The older generation are passing on, the younger generation are not doing this. So, my question is, what does it mean? We’re sitting in a museum to preserve this culture, to help people understand this. But what does it mean to this island and maybe to the world, if this is gone?

JEONG (through translator): If we don’t change the way we’re living, I believe that we don’t have any hope. I don’t see any hope. This is difficult to explain. But our lives were cyclical in that sea life was ingested into our bodies, expulsions form our bodies went back into the Earth to take root and grow things that we would once again ingest. But one day this cycle was broken. We would have to restart this cycle, our old way of life from the core, and I believe this is the only hope we have.

SREENIVASAN: One of the things the — Sum Chun (ph) said yesterday was that if the sea dies, we all dies.

HYUM (through translator): For people who have not grown up in the sea, they don’ know the ocean. For those who have lived by the sea as children, they become Haenyeos and they love the sea and it brings them great joy. But for those who haven’t lived by the ocean as children, they don’t pay attention to the sea. But for us, we’ve loved the ocean since we were little and made it our home and profession to support our lives so it’s an endearing place for us. But for those who don’t know the sea, they don’t have any love for it.

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HYUM (through translator): And that’s why Haenyeos have been protesting the sewage treatment plants that have been damaging the sea. If we keep killing the sea, the Haenyeos also cannot live.

KIM (through translator): Haenyeos have devoted their bodies and their livelihoods to the sea. When the sea that they’ve relied on dies, we take it to mean that there’s no future for us.

HYUM (through translator): We are Jeju’s poor Haenyeos. A hard and bitter life is our world. On hot days, cold days, rainy days, this body is diving through the waves.

SREENIVASAN: The Haenyeo Sum Chun (ph) yesterday, she sang a song that was written in a prison during imperialist Japanese times. Why is it still relevant today to the plight of Haenyeo, to the plight of this islands, and the struggles?

KIM (through translator): It was a song that a Haenyeo wrote when she was imprisoned during the Japanese occupation. The lyrics are imbued with her feelings of Han – irreparable sorrow. The lyrics and sentiments still connect to today’s Haenyeos in our current protests and fights.

SREENIVASAN: Euna, Sun-nyo, kamsahamnida for joining us.

JEONG: Kamsahamnida.

KIM: Kamsahamnida