Sue Kim’s documentary, “The Last of the Sea Women,” begins with a single narrator, a woman sharing her story as she prepares to dive into the ocean to gather shellfish. As the camera zooms out, we see that the ocean waves are filled with women in wetsuits. These women live on Jeju Island in South Korea, where they work as Haenyeotraditional fisherwomen who dive without the aid of oxygen tanks, or as they say, “with their own breath.”
Another narrator proclaims: “This is a job that you put your whole heart into. It was passed down to us by our mothers and grandmothers. Even when it’s cold or we don’t feel like diving, we dive. It’s in our bones. After all, we are women.” The women of this island have been combing the sea for sea urchins and snails for centuries. At one time, some 30,000 women were engaged in this traditional work. Only about 4,000 women still practice this form of fishing, despite UNESCO adding an ancient art to its list of activities. List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2016. “It’s like our culture is fading away,” another woman shares.
Nowadays, most Haenyeo They are sixty, seventy and eighty years old. These grandmothers have been doing this work for decades. At the beginning, we meet several of these older women who have worked as Haenyeo Throughout their lives, they train for a decade, starting at the age of seven. Although it is now considered an important part of Korean heritage, it was once a despised job. Many of the women tell stories of how they were disrespected for this job. Despite this new cultural respect, only a handful of young women continue to tend to the sea.
Among them are Sohee Jin and Jeongmin Woo, both in their 30s, who document their work by posting videos on YouTube and TikTok. Like many of their older colleagues, they came to the job despite its difficult nature because it pays well and gives them financial independence. Jin left a back-breaking corporate job and said she feels “comforted and calm working in nature.” Woo came to the job after her husband’s company went bankrupt and said it is one of the few flexible jobs for a working mother in South Korea.
Aside from its stunning underwater cinematography, Kim’s documentary is very simple in its execution. At Home and on Land, she uses simple camerawork to follow their everyday lives and a basic, direct-to-camera interview style to capture their stories. Yet this choice allows the poetic words of these women to remain the focus, and the power of their dedication to their calling and their passionate pleas for a better future to sound like a wake-up call to us all.
Not only are the livelihoods of all these women threatened by fewer young people joining their ranks. Truckloads of garbage have begun to pollute the waters. The women must move further and further away from the shallow waters. Soon they will need to use oxygen tanks to do the work, which many fear will lead to overfishing. Jin and Woo also use their social media platforms to document these changes and push the rest of the population to care about their collective future and the future of the planet around them. Despite all this, the documentary offers a ray of hope as the women share their humor and strength as a community and as guardians of this sacred tradition. That is until even more dire news threatens not only the haenyeo way of life, but possibly all the inhabitants of the island as well.
Jeju Island shares its maritime borders with Japan, which has announced plans to dump radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear meltdown into the ocean. While the Japanese government is technically in compliance with international standards, anti-nuclear activists and environmentalists are concerned that this project, which could last 30 years, will have a devastating effect on marine life for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Although the haenyeo come together to demonstrate for their rights and the future of the sea, the film ends without a clear resolution. Soon, Deok Jang, one of the older women, presents her case in Switzerland before the Human Rights Council. She is brave and speaks her truth with divine clarity. However, if one thing has become clear in recent years, it is that these top-level international law courts are not always a saving grace for the average citizen.
“Where there is sea, there will always be Haenyeo“Jin says. So it is to be expected that the sea will always exist. These women have faith that it will. It seems that Kim has faith too and ends her documentary with a moment of shared communal joy as the community celebrates the Haenyeo at an annual festival. Me? I’m not so sure.
This review was presented at the Toronto International Film Festival, which opens on October 11.