South Korea's free-diving 'sea women' demand accountability for a ruined harbor
Harbor construction has destroyed a South Korean fishing ground, and the free-diving women who worked it for decades are demanding compensation from the builder.
A fishing village on South Korea's eastern coast has watched its seabed collapse since 2021, when Ssangyong Engineering & Construction Co. began expanding a nearby harbor's breakwaters. Waters once rich with abalone, sea snails and seaweed were covered in white cement debris by early 2025, devastating the roughly two dozen haenyeo, or free-diving "sea women," who harvest shellfish without oxygen tanks and have worked those waters for more than five decades.
Three of the divers, all born in 1947, described diving to 10 meters and holding their breath for 90 seconds well into their 70s and 80s — skills now undermined by grounds that no longer produce. In June, about 53 haenyeo from two villages traveled to Seoul and staged a two-day sit-in outside Ssangyong's headquarters, sleeping on the street in diving suits and red headbands demanding compensation.
Ssangyong later offered an out-of-court settlement that community leaders called insufficient, leaving the divers to choose between accepting inadequate compensation or pursuing litigation that could take a decade. A local government office denies wrongdoing, saying it notified village representatives of the construction between 2017 and 2020. Some haenyeo now travel three hours to alternate diving sites, working 16-hour days starting at 2 a.m.
Based on reporting by Andrew Jeong for Eco-Business. Read the original: https://www.eco-business.com/news/south-koreas-sea-women-seek-accountability-for-harbor-damage-to-marine-habitat/
This article was produced with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed by an editor before publication.
