The only celebrity anywhere near The Last of the Sea Women is Malala Yousafzai, who is a producer. That means we don’t have self-centered productions here about some famous person. We have Sue Kim’s real documentary about a completely unique profession with inspiring characters the world knows nothing about. Just as I expect from Malala, selfless as ever.
I had never heard of a haenyeo before. They are mostly a group of older women on the southern islands off of South Korea (like Jeju island). These women make their living free diving, using no oxygen tanks to dive down to the coral and anemones in the ocean below, extracting fish and other animals to sell to markets to earn a living. Though that is now threatened with all sorts of modern pollutions encroaching on their territory.
The doc spends over half of its runtime introducing us to all sorts of haenyeos. We get a couple younger (30-40 years old) ones who use TikTok to get publicity for what they’re up to and promote the job. But the vast majority of these women are over 60-65: aging along with their profession. Their rapport with one another is as funny as any workplace comedy, with them mocking each other as they go about making their living. Which is why they keep doing this work: most of these ladies either had no husband or lost theirs, plus their lack of education gave them very few opportunities to even fend for themselves. While societally early on haenyeos had a negative connotation, the stories from these women show how none of those stereotypes mattered to them, because the job was providing them work. Dangerous work, but work nonetheless.
After we get to know a few of these ladies, documentarian Kim starts layering in the barrage of troubles befalling the haenyeos as they simply try to exist. There’s the obvious scuba tanks and corporate fishing but that’s normal. Global warming has made the dives harder and riskier, as the best stuff is further out, meaning longer (multiple minutes underwater) dives for better quality payouts. Pollution acidifies the water further, making it even harder to just break even. And then there’s the most urgent situation: the Fukushima Power Plant contaminated water dump. Japan during this doc’s filming wants to dump its contaminated water that it treated into the Pacific, which would head right to Jeju island and affect them in unknown ways for years to come. Each new issue dwindles the number of haenyeos further, but knowing this is their passion and purpose in life, they fight back nonetheless, at UN meetings, during protests, or even over TikToks.
By the end, we all hope this isn’t The Last of the Sea Women. They clearly make South Korea’s culture richer with their work, but the forces at work make it hard to believe we didn’t just watch the last days of a historically fascinating profession gone by the wayside. Haenyeos: the next elevator operator or paper draftsman? Only time will tell.