韩国济州岛海女：用呼吸维系文化的老年女性
Off the wind-scoured coast of Jeju Island, a cohort of elderly women slips beneath the sea with nothing but a cotton suit and a pair of goggles, their lungs carrying them into a world that has sustained their community for centuries. Known as haenyeo, or sea women, these freedivers harvest abalone, sea urchins and octopus from depths of up to 20 metres, holding their breath for two minutes or more in water that rarely exceeds 10 degrees Celsius. Their labour is not merely an economic pursuit but a distinct cultural identity inscribed on UNESCO’s intangible heritage list, a living archive of matriarchal resilience in a society long dominated by patriarchal norms.
The physiological demands of the haenyeo’s work are extraordinary. Decades of repeated diving trigger a dive reflex that slows the heart and redistributes blood to vital organs, granting these septuagenarians a cardiovascular efficiency that would humble most athletes in their twenties. Yet the body exacts its price: chronic ear infections, barotrauma and punishing hypothermia accumulate over a lifetime spent defying the ocean’s cold embrace. One 73-year-old diver, her hands calloused and her lungs as disciplined as a bellows, explains matter-of-factly that she will dive until her body forces her to stop — not from grim necessity, but from a determination to maintain a rhythm that orders her daily existence.
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