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In the bay in front of the Seongsan Ilchulbong, a former volcano, we discovered them, the sea women of Jeju. The divers are called Haenyo (sea women) in Korea and their special and extraordinary culture was included in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List in 2016.
They begin their training at the age of six and they continue actually to dive to depths of 20 meters for shellfish when they are over 80 years old.
Although men also dived into the 17th century, their work gradually became unprofitable due to high taxes, so that only women who did not have to pay taxes pursued this activity. This greatly strengthened the position of Jeju women, who now became the main breadwinners of their families. A matriarchal society developed. From this point in time, the proportion of men on the island rose again from 1:3 to 1:1, as many men had previously died fishing on the high seas - a work decreasing from this point in time.
Over the years, women's economic influence increased as seafood could be exported to the mainland as a delicacy. The women founded cooperatives and organized themselves in 1932 as an independence movement against the Japanese colonial rule.
But the work is hard and so the attractiveness of this job is continuously falling. From almost 30,000 divers before 1960, their number has now dropped to a few 1000 full-time divers.
