The Last of the Sea Women
Sue Kim’s documentary “The Last of the Sea Women” opens with one voice, a woman, who tells her Experiences as she is about to dive into the vast Ocean in search of fish. When the camera begins to zoom out, however, it turns out that the waves instead have women dressed in wetsuits all over them and these women reside on Jeju Island in South Korea where they have the occupation of haenyeo literally “women of the sea” who are able to go underwater without oxygen tanks and they say doing it “with their own breath.”
Says another voice, “This is a job where you devote your heart and soul. It is rooted in our grandmothers and mother. Even when the weather is chilly or there is a general sense of, I don’t feel let’s say diving, we still plunge into the water. In our bones it’s there. We are women after all.” The women of this island are know to have sought the sea for urchin and conchs for centuries. This traditional and even, as many as 30 000 women used to make this profession daily but in today’s age only approximately 4000 women uphold such form and tradition of fishing, although in the year 2016 unesco added a whole clan’s generational culture onto its Intangible Cultural Heritage List. “It’s like our culture is melting away,” shares another woman.
These days though, most haenyeo have aged and are in their sixties, seventies and eighties. These grandmothers have performed this occupation and have been doing this job for decades.
At the beginning, we are introduced to some of these aged women who have been working as haenyeo throughout their lives. In order to qualify for this work, they undergo training of at least ten years where most of them can start as young as seven years. Though today, it is seen as a very essential aspect of Korean culture, previously it was viewed with a lot of contempt. Several of the women recount instances when they were looked down upon and treated badly because of this job. Nonetheless, even though there has been a shift in perception, only a few young women are willing to go out and take care of the ocean.
These include 30 something Sohee Jin and Jeongmin Woo, who go on to post videos of their work on social media sites like YouTube and TikTok. For many older peers, they arrived at this occupation which is not easy but pays well; hence, it affords them the much needed freedom. Jin quit a stressful corporate job and says “it’s nice and relaxing to be able to work outdoors.” After her husband’s company went out of business, she joined the workforce, believing it to be a rarity among South Korean working mothers.
Apart from its stunning underwater filming, there’s nothing remarkable about the way Kim’s documentary is done. She employs uncomplicated camerawork to shoot and simplistic face to face interviewing style to tell their stories while at home and out on land. However, this decision lets these women’s poetic words be the center of attention, as well as their fierce devotion to their work and passionate words for a better world are, an unmistakable message for all of us.
It is not only the younger generations’ reluctance to join the women’s profession that endangers the welfare of all these women. The waters have begun to be contaminated with truckloads of waste.
The women have no option but to go deeper in the sea. Very soon, they will have to employ the use of oxygen tanks to carry out the tasks, something that many worry will lead to overfishing as ever-deepening waters might be used. Jin and Woo as well take their instagram to showcase these developments. To mobilise the rest of the population to care about their common tomorrow, as well as about the tomorrow of the surroundings where they live. Still, the film is uplifting as the women in the film embody laughter and perseverance at a time when most practitioners and custodians of this culture are facing unprecedented losses. That is, until even worse news arrives which jeopardises not only the haenyeo’s existence but perhaps every individual living on this island.
Jeju Island has its sea borders adjoining Japan which is planning to dump radioactive water into the ocean which was a byproduct of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Even if the Japanese government is abiding by rules framed on paper, anti nuclear and environmental activists are worried as this plan which is set to be implemented over the next 30 years will have a catastrophic impact on marine life for the next hundreds if not thousands of years.
Wherever they are, Jang’s arguments are unyielding. Although the haenyeo fight for their rights through collective protests for the future of the ocean and the film does not have a neat conclusion, Jin asserts that there will always be haenyeo no matter the circumstances. One of the aged women from the documentary, Soon Deok Jang, heads to Switzerland to present their case in front of the Human Rights Council. These are the same courts that, as has become apparent over the last few years, are increasingly sub optimal and often do the common man more harm than good.
What remains to be seen, then, is how much longer this can go on. Can the tides of time and development ever wash away the hallowed haenyeo? The women remain hopeful but the rest might not be so sanguine. ‘So long as there is the sea, so long will there be the haenyos,’ is what Jin states, in the latter portion of her history documentary. I will have to wait and see what the future holds. At present, I remain unconvinced.
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