The traditional free diver, Ok-sun Lee, was born in the very waters in which she planned to carry out her own drowning some 85 years later. Her life-long friend and fellow diver, Man-bok Kim, seeing the practicality of her choice, aided her in the attempt. The two women survived much together—over seventy years of work at sea, the…
Tag: Diving
Substantial Victory for Indigenous Villages Opposing 2nd Airport on Jeju Island, South Korea?
Their struggle is perhaps far from over, but the five villages of Seongsan-eup, Jeju Island–South Korea, who have actively opposed a controversial 2nd airport/ airport city/ aerotropolis project, have come to an initial agreement with Jeju Island’s provincial government. The two parties agreed to reevaluate the original feasibility studies done on the proposed area. This means…
Jeju Island’s Haenyo: A User’s Manual, bil-le, bil-le, beach of death
“Back then, many people had been killed by the national government’s forces,” the woman informed me. “Many of the bodies from neighboring villages washed up on Pyeol-ro-Neo-man-ri’s shore. The bille was strewn with bodies. The women of our village were offered a deal. If they cleaned up the corpses, then they’d have the rights to the neighboring village’s territory.”
And clean up the bodies they did. The women of Pyeol-ro-Neo-man-ri, many in their twenties and thirties at the time, some much younger, scoured the jagged bille, combing over each and every surface for the remains of the neighboring village’s dead.
Jeju Island’s Haenyo: A User’s Manual, the diver who heard music underwater
Jeju Island’s Haenyeo, A User’s Manual will be released as an e-book this July on Amazon. Pre-orders help sales rankings. If you enjoy the series, pre-order the book and receive it on July 14th. (Description on the book’s amazon page) I had a beautiful experience once, one night drinking wine on a coastal boardwalk, in…
Jeju Island’s Haenyo: A User’s Manual, a young diver tells her truth—of her love affair with the ocean and environmental decline
The truth is, I am the same person in the water and out of the water. I’m just a person trying to make a living like everyone else. Don’t think of me as a woman diver. Think of me as a person. I want people to know that I’m not doing this work because I couldn’t go to school or was born poor. No, that’s not it. I’m a woman diver because I chose to be a diver.
* visiting Jeju w/ daniel paul marshall
Originally posted on The Friday Influence:
photo by Joey Rositano This week’s post features a poem by Daniel Paul Marshall. Marshall writes about the Haenyeo, female divers from the Korean province of Jeju. The Hangul for the word, (해녀)roughly translates to sea women, and serves as the title for this poem. When I informed Marshall I…
Breath: Have the Diving Women of Jeju Island Been Using World Record Holder (Iceman) Wim Hof’s Cold Exposure Method for the Last 1500 Years?
July 6, 2016 joeyrositano Haenyo, Jeju Island, Uncategorized, Women DiversAnthropology, Asian culture, breath hold diving, Cold endurance, Diving, free diving, Haenyo,Hyperventilation, Iceman, Jeju Island, Korea, Shamanism, South Korea, Sumbisori, Traditional Culture, Vim Hof, Vim Hof Method, Woman Diver, Women Divers In the winter of 2015, I first saw Wim Hof, the incredible Iceman, on Vice.com. Hof is known for an amazing array of feats, many of which involve withstanding extreme arctic temperatures while experiencing little or no…
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