Art tour // Haenyeo – Women of the Sea

Haenyeo are the women of the sea. Female free divers who dive for animals and plants and live in symbiosis with the sea, waves and storms on the South Korean island of Jeju. The more than a thousand-year-old haenyeo tradition has created a semi-matriarchal society, where the women provide for the family and the profession is passed down from mothers to daughters. Today, the culture is included in the UNESCO World Heritage List, but it is waning because many young people choose a different way of life. The photographer Hyung S. Kim has been portraying the diving women for the past seven years. With sober but powerful photographs taken on the beach at the moment when the women are coming out of the sea after a hard and dangerous day working underwater, he has created a catalog of the culture as it appears today, where most of the women divers are between 60 and 80. The exhibition also shows the documentary film “Breathing under water” by Heeyoung Ko, where the women themselves talk about their history, community and spirituality.

Duration: 30 minutes + questions.

Free when entrance to the museum is paid.