Sue Kim's The Last of the Sea Women opens with stunning scenes of a free diver descending to the sea floor, underwater cinematography that would not be out of place in a nature documentary or extreme sports video.
We quickly learn, however, that this is just an ordinary day at the office for the diver -- who happens to be a woman in her 70s. She is a haenyeo, one of a dwindling number of women on South Korea's Jeju Island who dive without oxygen to harvest abalone, sea urchins, octopus and other sea creatures for their livelihood.
"As haenyeo, the ocean feeds us and feels like our mother's arms," the woman says in a voiceover. "Haenyeo are guardians of the sea and we have protected the ocean for hundreds of years."
The Last of the Sea Women both celebrates the haenyeo culture and chronicles the threats to their way of life from pollution, climate change and industrial overfishing.
The documentary, produced by A24 and Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousfazi's Extracurricular, is currently being showcased at the 29th Busan International Film Festival and will premiere Oct. 11 on Apple TV+..
Kim (The Speed Cubers), a Korean American director, said she was immediately drawn to the haenyeo during a family trip to Jeju Island when she was eight years old.
"I just fell in love with them as a young girl," Kim said at a press conference with a group of haenyeo Thursday in Busan. "They were so bold and so confident and so fearless. I just really fell in love with this different version of Korean womanhood."
While diving off Jeju Island goes back for nearly two millennia, women took over the practice in the 17th century. According to one theory, rulers began imposing heavy taxes on men for their earnings, leading their wives and daughters to become the primary wage earners.
"[The haenyeo] were the breadwinners of their families," Kim said. "They turned Jeju into a semi-matriarchal island."
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As one of the divers says in the film, "Jeju is famous for three things: Rocks, wind and women."
Once looked down upon as mere laborers, the rich traditions of the haenyeo -- from their communal spirit to their rowing songs and shamanistic rites -- were added by UNESCO to its Intangible Cultural Heritage List in 2016 and they have become a key part of Jeju Island's tourism industry. The recognition, however, comes as the number of divers has continued to fall dramatically.
According to the film, there were as many as 30,000 female divers in the 1960s, but their number has dropped to just 4,000 or so today -- almost all of whom are well past typical retirement age. Born into a modern and prosperous South Korea, younger generations have turned away from the grueling and dangerous work.
As Kim made several visits to Jeju over the past decade to meet and learn more about the haenyeo, she said she felt a growing need to document the culture before it was too late. And while the threat to their future is a constant undertow throughout the film, Kim also wanted to highlight the joy and earthy humor that so many haenyeo seem to share.
"There is often a narrative out there that kind of shows them as unhappy to be working in the sea at their age and that's not how I experience them," Kim said. "I want to show the vibrancy of their personalities and the joy that they get through their work."
Jeong Yeongae, a 74-year old haenyeo who joined Kim in Busan, described the sense of absolute freedom she felt when she started diving.
"When I first went in the ocean, I felt like the ocean was heaven," she said. "I was so excited I couldn't sleep [afterwards]."
Beyond their dwindling numbers, the major threat to the haenyeo is the environmental degradation of their once-pristine waters. As temperatures rise, aquatic species have declined, causing harvests to shrink and making dives increasingly dangerous.
The Last of the Sea Women documents the growing activism of the haenyeo ahead of the 2023 release of treated radioactive wastewater from Japan's ruined Fukushima nuclear plant. One of them, Soon Deok Jang, even delivers a quietly impassioned plea to halt the release at a United Nations session in Geneva, Switzerland, practicing her speech phonetically in English.
Hope for the future and a powerful voice for advocacy also emerge in a pair of 30-somethings, Sohee Jin and Jungmin Woo, who have become professional haenyeo and are bringing the culture into the social media age.
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The challenges remain daunting for the haenyeo and the ocean they call home. But they will return to the sea for as long as they can, day after day, diving 30 feet or more and holding their breath for minutes at a time.
"This is a job you pour your heart into, passed down from our mothers and grandmothers," says one haenyeo. "Even when it's cold or we don't feel like diving, we still dive. It's in our bones. We are women, after all."
The Last of the Sea Women premieres Oct. 11 on Apple TV+.