Diving into the deep waters for a living and scouring the sea beds for shellfish and seaweed. They are the women divers who symbolize courage and endurance.
Earning a living in the water has become less lucrative due to declining seafood prices and harvests.
Prices have dropped because of abalone farms – although natural abalone caught in deep waters by a haenyeo can fetch more than $100.
Some 5,400 haenyeo work on Jeju Island, down from a peak of 23,000 in the 1960s.
Of those, more than 90 percent are older than 50, according to experts and government statistics.
Officials on this oval-shaped island, 60 miles off the southern tip of the Korean peninsula, are trying to save the haenyeo tradition.
A new training centre is planned and they are offering residents and visitors the chance to share brief swims with haenyeo.
The tradition dates back to the 18th century. Men on Jeju once dove with the women too, but it it was about that time when it began to fall solely to women.
The reason for the change is not clear – although the idea of men and women swimming together in tight-fitting suits may have been far too scandalous for the conservative Chosun dynasty that then ruled Korea.
Women as breadwinners contrasts with the rest of Korea’s starkly patriarchal society.
The haenyeo of Jeju even led the island’s resistance to Japan during its 1910-45 occupation of the peninsula.
Japan also has a tradition of women divers off its southern coasts, known as
"ama," but the Koreans insist theirs are more hardy as they swim year-round.
Tough as they are, it’s a dangerous and debilitating avocation.
Haenyeo are taught to exhale rapidly when they surface, to expel carbon dioxide from their lungs. Still, many suffer from decompression sickness from the gas bubbles that form in the body during rapid ascents. The bubbles cause sore joints, headaches and other problems. Haenyeo commonly take painkillers before work.
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