Asian Geographic 2017

OLIVER JARVIS is the editor of UW360 based in Singapore.

This article first appeared on the website.

Y.ZIN KIM is an underwater photographer based in

South Korea. She is currently preparing for an underwater

documentary as the very first female cave diver in Asia.

She will be attending ADEX 2017 in Singapore.

a basketball – sits at the surface of the water with a net called
a mangsari hanging beneath it to collect the divers’ harvest.
Sharp tools called bitchangs and kakuri are used to remove
abalones, sea urchins, conches and octopuses from the
ocean floor.
After a dive, the Hae-Nyeo breach the water’s surface
and can be heard whistling – an ancient technique used to
expel carbon dioxide from the lungs. Scrambling out of the
ocean, tired and breathless, they reveal a human fragility that
is imperceptible when they’re gliding underwater. The danger
of the job – navigating the line between life and death every
day to sustain their families and the island – is manifested
in the engraved folds and crease lines on their faces in their
later years.
In the 1960s, the Korean government forged a plan
to jump-start the country’s economy in every province.
Concluding that Jeju was not a practical place to build
factories, officials decided to turn it into an exporter of
mandarin oranges. By 1969, the majority of rural workers
had joined this new industry. About two percent of all
land in Jeju was dedicated to farming the fruit, which had a

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After a dive, the Hae-Nyeo breach

the water’s surface and can be heard

whistling – an ancient technique to

expel carbon dioxide from the lungs

above The Hae-Nyeo
weigh and sell their
catch to local markets,
harvesting abalone, sea
urchins and octopuses

significant impact on the numbers of Hae-Nyeo. Between 1965

and 1970, numbers dropped from over 20,000 to under 15,000,

increasing pressure on sustaining the Hae-Nyeo way of life.

UNESCO placed Hae-Nyeo on the Intangible Cultural

Heritage list in 2016, but these unique diving traditions are no

longer being passed down to the younger generation.

Today, the vast majority of Hae-Nyeo are well into

middle age – but against all the odds, the practices of these

tenacious divers continue to endure. ag