As I begin expressing my gratitude to all those who helped me with additional information about the haenyeo, let me first note that this is not what Jeju’s sea women call themselves. They use jamsu, jamnyeo, or jomnyeo, which are all Jeju words. That said, the Japanese word haenyeo is how sea women are known internationally. This might be a good place to note that in 2004 a large abalone could fetch about 50,000 won or $60. These days, a haenyeo can make approximately $26,000 a year for part-time work.
One of the first articles I found as I began my research was a piece written in 1967 by Suk Ki Hong and Hermann Rahn in Scientific American about a study looking at whether the haenyeo’s ability to withstand cold was genetic or an adaptation. This question fascinated me, and down the rabbit hole I went. Through additional articles in American Headache Society, American Physiological Society, Journal of Sports Sciences, and the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society, I learned invaluable details about breath holding, decompression sickness, energy metabolism, and body temperature for both Korea’s haenyeo and Japan’s ama. The following are grouped by research paper: Hideki Tamaki, Kiyotaka Kohshi, Tatsuya Ishitake, and Robert M. Wong; Jay Chol Choi, Jung Seok Lee, Sa-Yoon Kang, Ji-Hoon Kang, and Jong-Myon Bae; William E. Hurford, Suk Ki Hong, Yang Saeng Park, Do Whan Ahn, Keizo Shiraki, Motohiko Mohri, and Warren M. Zapol; and Frédéric Lemaitre, Andreas Fahlman, Bernard Gardette, and Kiyotaka Kohsi. The following collaborated in various groupings on multiple papers: N. Y. An, K. A. Bae, D. S. Han, S. K. Hong, S. Y. Hong, B. S. Kang, D. H. Kang, C. Kim, C. K. Kim, P. K. Kim, Y. W. Kwon, I. S. Lee, S. H. Lee, K. S. Paik, S. C. Park, Y. D. Park, Y. S. Park, D. W. Rennie, S. H. Song, C. S. Suh, D. J. Suh, and C. S. Yoon.
I’d also like to acknowledge Choe Sang-hun, Alison Flowers, Priscilla Frank, Gwi-Sook Gwon, AeDuck Im, Kim Soonie, Joel McConvey, Simon Mundy, Lee Sunhwa, and Catherine Young for their magazine articles and academic essays on the haenyeo, shamanism, and Jeju’s women in general. For current issues related to the sea, I turned to a survey in Marine Policy about production, economics, and management of marine resources conducted by Jae-Young Ko, Glenn A. Jones, Moon-Soo Heo, Young-Su Kang, and Sang-Hyuck Kang. Also informative was a transcript of an interview by Youngmi Mayer with three haenyeo—Jung Won Oh, Ko Jun Ja, and Mun Yeon Ok—for Lucky Peach: The Gender Issue and reprinted in Harper’s magazine, and Ines Min’s interview with diver Kim Jae Youn for COS. I also found articles about the haenyeo on the following websites: Ancient Explorers, The Jeju Weekly, Culture24, and Utne Reader. I have the deepest admiration for scholars who embed themselves in a culture. Haejoang Cho lived on Udo Island, which is part of Jeju, in the 1970s. Her dissertation, An Ethnographic Study of a Female Diver’s Village in Korea, provided me with great details about the lives of haenyeo, their views on men, and translations of rowing songs. I visited the Haenyeo Museum several times. The exhibits allowed me to examine haenyeo tools and diving costumes up close. The videotaped oral histories of elderly haenyeo offered wonderful details. The staff gave me books published by the museum—Mother of the Sea and Jeju Haenyeo—and introduced me to haenyeo who lived nearby.
In addition to the interviews that were arranged in advance, Grace Kim and I also spoke to haenyeo as they waited to be taken to the sea, gathered seaweed on the shore, or were coming out of the water with their catches. Among these were Kang I-suk, Kim Wan-soon, and Kim Won-seok. I’d like to single out Kim Eun-sil, who worked as a haenyeo on Jeju and as an itinerant diver to help her family, and Yun Mi-ja, who, among other things, shared what life was like for her in Vladivostok. To understand the functions and importance of the bulteok, I relied on the research of Eun-Jung Kang, Kyu-Han Kim, Kyeonghwa Byun, and Changgen Yoo. Artist Mikhail Karikis’s video and sound installation about the haenyeo and Hyung S. Kim’s wall-sized photographic portraits of divers helped me to visualize the physical attributes of the older Young-sook, Kang sisters, and others. I was fortunate to meet Barbara Hammer in New York and talk to her about her documentary, Diving Women of Jeju-do. Journal Films’ Families of the World series produced a lovely little documentary about a twelve-year-old girl learning to dive on Jeju in 1975.
If you ever find your way to Jeju, I hope you will visit the April 3 Peace Park. It is a beautiful and very moving place. The final accounting of how many people died on Jeju during the April 3 Incident may never be known. There were 300,000 people living on Jeju when it started. Death estimates have ranged from 30,000 to 60,000, although recent research suggests that as many as 80,000 may have been killed. The early months of 1949 accounted for the highest number of deaths, with some estimates as high as 10 percent of Jeju’s total population. Another 80,000 islanders became refugees, living with relatives or in community halls, elementary schools, or lean-tos in fields. By the time the incident officially ended, seven years later, 40,000 people had fled to Japan. Since for fifty years people on Jeju could not speak about what had happened under threat of death and other reprisals, it was the exiles in places like Osaka who kept the stories of death and destruction from disappearing entirely. Seventy percent of Jeju’s villages had been burned. Many of them were never rebuilt. In the hills, people still come across crumbling ruins of villages, with eighty-four “lost villages” being identified at this date. Today the site of the massacre at Bukchon is a field for growing garlic. It has a small memorial tablet similar to those honoring victims in other villages around the island.
In addition to the aforementioned official report about the April 3 Incident, I found further information in “The Question of American Responsibility for the Suppression of the Chejudo Uprising” by Bruce Cumings; “Crimes, Concealment and South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission” by Do Khiem and Kim Sung-soo; “The Northwest Youth League” by Lauren Flenniken; “Jeju Women’s Lives in the Context of the Juju April 3rd Uprising” by Rimwha Han and Soonhee Kim; The Massacres at Mount Halla as well as other articles written by Hun Joon Kim; “Healing the Wounds of War” by Heonik Kwon; “The Cheju-do Rebellion” by John Merrill; “The Ghosts of Cheju” by the Newsweek staff; “Reading Volcano Island” by Sonia Ryang; and “The 1948 Cheju-do Civil War” by Wolcott Wheeler.
I’m lucky to have many wonderful people who support me as a writer and as a woman. I must thank Ginny Boyce at Altour Travel for once again getting me to where I needed to go, Nicole Bruno and Sara Seyoum for errands and office work, and Mari Lemus for keeping the ship on an even keel. Carol Fitzgerald and her colleagues at the Book Report Network have helped me with my newsletter, while Sasha Stone continues to make my website both beautiful and informative. (Please visit my website at www.LisaSee.com to see videos about the haenyeo, find discussion questions for book clubs, and much more.) My agent, Sandra Dijkstra, and her staff of fabulous women stay attuned to the business side of things. Everyone at Scribner and Simon & Schuster has been kind to me. Kathy Belden edited the novel with a delicate hand. Nan Graham and Susan Moldow encouraged me. Katie Monaghan and Rosie Mahorter carried out publicity duties with abounding energy and kindness. And here’s a shout-out to the many others in marketing and sales who astound me daily with their enthusiasm and creativity.