Let’s say that your seventy two year old grandmother decides to don a wet suit and googles and dive head long into the stormy depths of the sea and use a metal hook to fish not just any fish but crustaceans and sea urchins. The Last of the Sea Women is telling how the aldrich hat is normally worn on accordance to the social status for an empress of the society granted that such tradition has been observed for hundreds of years but sadly it is on the verge of disappearing because of global warming, water pollution and honest to god difficulty. Haenyeo are South Korean women living in Mysore on the Sea of Jeju Island. They have engaged in this life threatening occupation for a number of generations to feed their families, swimming out of rock shore beaches so that they can spend many hours going down and coming up to make a decent living.
Documentary maker Sue Kim and Nobel Peace Prize winning producer Malala Yousafzai exemplify how do the haenyeo manage to exceptionally bond with each other and how are they able to keep doing this at such an old age. These women, who were previously regarded as the lowest of the low in the Korean social system, had no sources of income. It was sheer necessity that drew them to the riches of the sea.
An active member of Jeju Island’s haenyeo community, tour guide Jang Soon Duk considers bluntly the region’s women who talk about their choices freely and so on. The women in her society had to look after their kids. The ocean provided them with a means of survival, but it also provided them with a sense of purpose and freedom.
His fellow workers, Cinematographer Justin Turkowski for instance, also recorded their physical efforts during such dives. These workers are required to go up to 50 meters below the oceans in some cases surface and submerse themselves dozens of times in their effort to breathe in the span of few hours. Jang talks about reaching “the blue wall”, several meters down, where you feel as though your head has been hit by a mallet. In variations that depend on the season, the haenyeo can stay underwater and hold their breath for several minutes while swimming against strong currents and undergoing extreme changes in pressure. With the help of rocks, they extract not only crabs, clams, mussels, and sea urchins, but also cephalopods from the depths and swim upwards to the buoys where the catch is contained within a net. Death is commonplace for a great number of haenyeo. This is not just one diver’s perspective but that of many of them.
The women jest since it is known that most men would not be able to do it anyway. After all, it is simply too difficult and dangerous. The moments when they are happy and full of fun are absolutely adorable. They have learned to take care of themselves for many decades. There is a friendly rivalry to see who manages to catch more, but there is also a strong feeling of collective success. Nobody goes hungry or returns to land with empty hands. The second stage of their intensive labour begins to take the hold. The catch needs to be defured and dressed for the market. This vanity section is equally laborious. Many of the haenyeo are over 80 years old, yet they endure hours of squatting on the ground scrubbing and chopping.
The narrative of the movie is altered by the time haenyeo come on board and express their problems: their sources of livelihood are under threat. They have seen the devastating direct impacts of changing weather patterns and human pollution. Jang tells Kim about different places they have been to where beaches are washed with miles of plastic, styrofoam, and various rubbish. Such garbage and runoff from paddy fields in the other parts of Jeju Island, destroy the ecosystem by including mass deaths of marine animals. It is sickening. Kim moves the camera and finds pools of dead and putrid fish. Jang is mostly worried about the warming seawater – they are all worried, but Jang mostly worries. Coral reefs are further damaged by climate shifts including the culling of jellyfish blooming populations. The haenyo look for reefs that are further up on the map and at deeper depths with worse results.
There is a sharp turn in the storyline which happens in the second act. The haenyeo discover that the Japanese government plans to dump the radioactive waste from the 2011 disaster at ‘Fukushima nuclear power plant’ into the sea. The Japanese are reporting that the harmful water has gone through treatment with low risks to living organisms. Over the course of thirty years, the effluent will be gradually deposited below the ocean bed instead of letting it flow into the ocean. Within a matter of months it will head towards Jeju Island and South Korea. Their muscles alight with exorbitant feelings the haenyeo carry with them nuclear activist actions. Some no longer smiling but rather crying at the idea of their most beloved country being polluted with nuclear waste for hundreds of years. They have survived long enough, but that will be the impact on their children and generations that will follow. Why is it that they are such things in the world at all?
Figures related to Kim’s stories finish with Jung Min Woo and So Hee Jin from the nearby Geoje Island. The two women are in their thirties, and like their “aunties” on Jeju, they joined the haenyeo for similar reasons. Jung worked for years in an office and burned out with that life. So has three children and her husband is unemployed. They needed to eat. The sea, emotional stress, and determination were the solution. As strange as it may sound about the new outfit of those same ‘haenyeo’ in the fight is not the one in which one welcomes the ‘nuralzym’’ which is absent flesh is eaxpets.
The women are herself and her daughter, who are social media influencers throughout have super active youtube channels. They perform sung and choreographed dances and display gutsy and vigorous actions submerged under water as well. The film realizes the important possibility of its future continuation.
The haenyeo do not carry oxygen or scuba diving equipment. This would mainly cause that there would be a strong drive for worse alt into better targets emptying water. They work in ways that are sustainable and compatible with nature. Nature feeds them, and haenyeo understand the limits of the nature’s bounty. They are incredible human beings. They are the best of humanity, showing ways to live in this world without ruining it. The Last of the Sea Women is a wondrous narrative on the themes of sisterhood, resilience and survival against all odds.
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