“There’s a 90-year-old woman who goes out for four hours every day and catches sea urchins with her hands.” Filmmaker Sue Kim is describing the flabbergasting feats displayed by the subjects of her first feature, The Last of the Sea Women. Known as haenyeo (pronounced “hen-YO”), these real-life mermaids free dive the ocean depths off the Korean peninsula’s southern tip to pluck the fresh seafood for which Jeju Island is renowned. Somehow, as Kim puts it, “so many people haven’t heard of this woman-centered, breadwinning, matriarchal society that’s existed for hundreds of years on this island.”
Now, the new Apple TV+ film is bringing their incredible work and inspiring lives to a global audience. The Last of the Sea Women trails this league of extraordinary women—most in their 60s and older—as they confront a threat to the waters that are the source of their livelihood. Produced by female-education activist and youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai, it’s the rare documentary that feels both uplifting and urgent, about a tight-knit band of fierce, sassy, tireless elder ladies who embody freedom and independence—and whose physical feats surpass healthy men in their prime.
I happened upon them myself years ago when visiting Jeju Island: Tucking into my hotel breakfast, a soothing abalone rice porridge, I spotted out the window, overlooking the island’s volcanic cliffs, a woman older than my mother padding across the lawn down toward the beach in a wetsuit. Minutes later she was a speck bobbing in the sea, alongside a few other women.
Kim was likewise astonished by her first encounter with the haenyeo. Born and raised in the US, she would often go back to Korea with her immigrant parents, and when she was 8, they made an excursion to Jeju Island (dubbed the Hawaii of Korea) and came upon a large group of women by a cove. “I was shook,” Kim recalls. “They were yelling at each other but laughing too. They were so bold and strong and vibrant. I had never seen Korean women like that before. They were so unapologetically occupying their space, and I immediately fell in love with them because of that energy.”
The moment lingered in Kim’s mind for years. “This underwater girl gang was a revelation for me,” she says. “I was fascinated by them and devoured anything about them I could get my hands on.”
Twenty years ago she started traveling to Jeju Island specifically to seek out members of the more than 30 haenyeo communities around the island. A decade later Kim had a realization. “I was looking at this 84-year-old woman and the rest of her community in the water, and they all very much looked like grandmas,” she says. “I asked her, ‘Where are all the younger haenyeo?’ She said, very bluntly, ‘This is it. We’re the last generation.’ That’s when I realized someone has to document them while they’re still here and can tell their own stories.”
But first she had to overcome her subjects’ instinctive wariness. “Haenyeo communities are isolated and rural, and they don’t naturally trust people,” Kim explains. “It’s not like everybody wanted to be part of this film.” But they were eventually intrigued that a filmmaker from abroad sought to share their story with the world.
The film’s stunning cinematography, particularly the underwater shots, showcases the women in their natural habitat. “On land the haenyeo move like older women—they walk slowly or might have a hunch,” Kim notes. “But the minute you see them in the water, a transformation happens. Their superpower is their physical agility underwater.”
Underwater cinematographer and free diver Justin Turkowski was tasked with capturing the women’s prowess and grace in the water—and managed to quickly earn their respect. “Our whole crew was basically made up of Asian women, and here comes this six-foot-three Caucasian guy,” Kim recalls. “I could see in the haenyeos’ body language that they were like, ‘Who’s this guy?’ You could see the skepticism until we got in the water.”
Turkowski spent quite a bit longer underwater than the haenyeo: He had to dive down ahead of them, set up the camera, and then cover the full extent of each dive. Only after they emerged could he come to the surface. “He can hold his breath for two or three minutes,” Kim marvels. “That’s all he needed to prove himself to them. The haenyeo could not stop talking about how great he was at holding his breath.” They started calling him haenam, or “sea man.” “They were like, ‘You’re one of us.’”
In fact, the haenyeo’s stamina was one of the biggest challenges for the crew. “It’s shockingly hard to keep up with them,” Kim smiles. “They’re in such good physical condition, and the athleticism is part of their everyday, whereas it’s not part of ours. So especially on days when we were filming them diving, the crew would all come back and just lie down, completely spent.”
Yousafzai, a longtime advocate for women and girls, admits she had never heard of the haenyeo before 2020, when she chose this to be the first feature project of her production company, Extracurricular. “Their story shows how you can become an activist and stand up to injustice at any age,” she says. “Meeting these women and seeing how dedicated they are to their community and cause motivated me to keep going in my own activism and gave me confidence that I will always have the energy, no matter my age.”
As the film has begun making its fall festival rounds, Kim has shepherded a few of the haenyeo outside their natural environs; the two who made the trip to the Toronto International Film Festival for the world premiere have left Korea merely a few times. (Most haenyeo rarely even venture to Jeju City, the island’s largest city.)
After their premiere screening in Toronto, haenyeo Jang Soon Duk was overcome with emotion. “She couldn’t believe she was speaking to a room full of people who gave her a standing ovation,” Kim explains. “She hadn’t watched a film inside a theater since before she got married 50 years ago. I don’t think she understood that this was the kind of reception and platform she would get.”
That experience nods to another facet of the haenyeo that Kim discovered while filming. “When I first became aware of them, the thing that I latched onto so much was their strength,” she says. “I was a tomboy, not ladylike at all, just not the stereotype of a proper young Asian American girl. So their independence, strength, and boldness seemed to break feminine stereotypes in a way that I could aspire to. They gave me a new model of Korean womanhood.”
But, she continues, “as we were filming I also saw the polar opposite of what I thought they represented. They’re so genuinely loving and caring and quite protective of each other. They’re very maternal and nurturing. They also have a much softer side.”
The crew experienced that caretaking impulse firsthand. “Feeding people is how Koreans show love,” Kim says. “When we were filming the haenyeo shelling sea urchins, they’d try to feed our cinematographer who was behind the camera. It was so cute, if very disruptive.”
And that kindness and generosity is what Kim believes underpins their environmentalism and conservationism. “In the film Jang Soon Duk says, ‘It’s not about what’s happening to the sea for us—we’re old. We have to leave the ocean in a better condition for our children and grandchildren.’ That their activism for the ocean is on behalf of later generations shows that softer, more loving side that I didn’t know about until I started making this film.”
The Last of the Sea Women premieres on Apple TV+ on October 11.
