How Many Haenyeo Still Dive in Jeju, and Where to See Their Culture

A UNESCO listing did not stop the decline. The province's own table shows the active diver count falling from 2,623 at the end of 2024 to 2,371 at the end of 2025, a drop of about 9.6% in twelve months, nine years after the 2016 inscription.

A second common assumption is that every haenyeo is a woman. The province's definition of an active haenyeo (현직해녀) is someone currently doing 물질 (muljil, the diving work) for turban shells, abalone and other seafood, and it adds 해남 (haenam, male divers) in brackets, so the official count includes men who dive, although the table does not say how many.

This guide sets out what the numbers say, who is counted, what each heritage listing covers, and how to see haenyeo culture without getting in the way of people at work. Every figure comes from the province, the Haenyeo Museum, UNESCO, FAO, the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries or the Korea Tourism Organization, all checked on 23 September 2026.

What the numbers actually show

Jeju Province publishes its haenyeo count on the Haenyeo Museum website, maintained by the province's Haenyeo Cultural Heritage Division (해녀문화유산과). The current table is labelled as at the end of 2025 and compares it with the end of 2024.

The headline figures are simple. There were 2,371 active haenyeo at the end of 2025 and 5,111 former haenyeo (전직해녀), defined as people who used to do the diving work, for a combined total of 7,482. A year earlier the table recorded 2,623 active and 4,938 former haenyeo.

The two halves of the island hold different shares. Jeju-si, the northern city, had 1,380 active divers against 1,527 a year earlier, while Seogwipo-si in the south had 991 against 1,096. The number of former haenyeo rose over the same year, from 4,938 to 5,111.

Adding up the province's bands gives the age profile that matters. Divers aged 60 and over number 2,136, about 90% of the total, and those aged 70 and over number 1,502, about 63%. The single largest band is 70 to 79, with 1,075 people.

At the other end, just 106 active haenyeo are under 50, and 30 are under 40. Seogwipo-si has the older workforce: 250 of its 991 divers, about a quarter, are 80 or older, compared with 177 of 1,380 in Jeju-si, about 13%.

The province also breaks the count down by fisheries cooperative (수협), the bodies through which divers are organised. The Jeju-si cooperative has 947 active haenyeo, Seogwipo 377, Hallim 374, Seongsanpo 356, Moseulpo 258 and the island of Chujado 59. Chujado's divers are almost all older: 53 of its 59 are 60 or over.

Two small inconsistencies sit in the published table, and neither changes the totals. The caption text still reads "2024년말 현재" (as at the end of 2024) even though the header and columns say 2025, and the 70-plus band is labelled "70～80세" in one table and "70～79세" in the other while showing the same 1,075 people.

Who counts as a haenyeo

The Haenyeo Museum defines haenyeo as women whose occupation is gathering seafood by entering the sea "기계 장치 없이 맨 몸과 오로지 자신의 의지에 의한 호흡조절로", that is, without mechanical equipment, with their bare bodies and breath control alone. The work itself is called 물질 (muljil).

UNESCO's description matches this and adds detail. It describes "a community of women, some aged in their 80s, which goes diving 10m under the sea to gather shellfish, such as abalone or sea urchins for a living without the help of oxygen masks", and says they harvest "for up to seven hours a day, 90 days of the year".

Experience sets the hierarchy. UNESCO says divers are grouped as hagun, junggun and sanggun, "with the sanggun offering guidance to the others", and that knowledge passes through families, schools, local fishery cooperatives "which have the area's fishing rights", haenyeo associations, the Haenyeo School and the Haenyeo Museum.

The sound you may hear from the shore has a name. The museum calls it 숨비소리 (sumbisori), a whistle-like "호오이 호오이" made when a diver surfaces after a dive of about one to two minutes and expels carbon dioxide before drawing in fresh air. UNESCO describes dives of about one minute, so the two sources give slightly different durations.

What the divers harvest is broader than the famous abalone. FAO's heritage page says Jeju haenyeo collect "more than 20 varieties of seafood", grouped as molluscs such as horned turban and disk abalone, echinoderms such as sea urchin and sea cucumber, and seaweeds such as agar-agar, hijiki and sea mustard.

The work has always been tied to farming. FAO notes that divers used seaweed as fertiliser for barley and millet on Jeju's infertile volcanic soil, and that about 522 seaweed species, around 70% of those found in Korea, live on the island's coast.

FAO also credits the divers with managing their own grounds. Its page says haenyeo traditionally decided when to ban or permit gathering of each species based on spawning periods and growth, and describes the community as meritocratic but protective of less capable members, who remain "thoroughly wary of overfishing".

Haenyeo also worked far from Jeju. The museum describes 출향해녀 (chulhyang haenyeo), divers who left from the late 19th century for other Korean provinces and for Japan, China and Russia. Its 1937 table counts 2,801 Jeju divers working on the Korean peninsula, 1,650 of them in South Gyeongsang, and 1,601 in Japan, 750 of them on Tsushima.

Six layers of heritage status

The UNESCO listing is one of five designations the museum lists, FAO added a sixth in 2023, and each covers something slightly different. Knowing which is which helps when you read signs at the museum or the coast.

UNESCO inscribed the "Culture of Jeju Haenyeo (women divers)" on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2016, under decision 11.COM 10.b.24; the museum dates it to 30 November 2016. UNESCO's text credits the culture with advancing "women's status in the community" and promoting environmental sustainability through community management of fishing.

The oldest layer is the songs. The museum says haenyeo sang rowing songs while rowing to distant fishing grounds, improvising verses about home, and that these 해녀노래 became Jeju's intangible cultural heritage No. 1 on 26 August 1971.

The newest is international and agricultural. The Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries announced that FAO designated the Jeju Haenyeo Fisheries System a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System on 10 November 2023, after a review that the ministry had supported since 2017. FAO's page carries the label "GIAHS since 2023".

None of the listing texts read for this guide sets a target number of divers. They recognise the practice, while the province's own count keeps falling.

The Haenyeo Museum in Gujwa

The Haenyeo Museum (해녀박물관) is a provincial museum at 26 Haenyeobangmulgwan-gil, Gujwa-eup, Jeju-si. It opened on 9 June 2006 and reopened on 16 March 2015 after its galleries were remodelled.

The project began as a plan, drawn up in September 2000, for a fishing-village folk exhibition hall (제주어촌민속전시관). Construction ran from December 2003 to September 2005, and the name Haenyeo Museum was fixed on 6 October 2005, eight months before it opened. Its two buildings cover 4,958.2 square metres.

Opening hours are 9am to 6pm, with the ticket office open 9am to 5pm. The museum closes on 1 January, Seollal (Lunar New Year), Chuseok and every Monday. Its booking page adds that when a Monday is a public or substitute holiday, the closure moves to the next non-holiday day.

The autumn notices show the pattern. The museum announced it will close on Tuesday 6 October 2026 and stay open Saturday 3 to Monday 5 October, and it posted a separate notice that it closes on Chuseok day, 25 September 2026.

Admission fees are small. An adult aged 25 to 64 from outside Jeju pays 1,100 won, and a visitor aged 13 to 24 pays 500 won. Children aged 12 and under and people aged 65 and over are exempt, as are registered disabled visitors, and Jeju residents pay half price.

The main building has galleries on the first and second floors and an observation deck on the third, according to the museum's facilities page, and a second building holds a performance hall. The grounds also hold the 12-metre memorial tower to the Jeju haenyeo anti-Japanese movement.

Guided commentary exists but is Korean only. The museum says tours start on the hour at 10am, 11am, 1pm, 2pm and 3pm, last about 40 minutes, take up to 60 people and must be booked three days in advance; changes and cancellations are by phone on 064-710-7773. If you do not read Korean, plan on self-guided viewing.

The museum is also the base for the island's haenyeo festival. The 19th Jeju Haenyeo Festival and 9th Haenyeo Day ceremony ran on 19 and 20 September 2026 at the museum and the nearby coast, opening with a ceremony for the tenth anniversary of the UNESCO listing. If you are timing a future trip around it, watch the museum's notices board, where the 2026 dates were announced on 11 September.

Reaching Gujwa-eup without a car takes planning; the island's public options are set out in the guide to getting around without a car.

Watching a dive at Seongsan

The one diving demonstration listed by the Korea Tourism Organization is at Seongsan, beside Seongsan Ilchulbong. KTO's entry for the 성산포 해녀물질공연장 (Seongsanpo haenyeo diving performance site) says haenyeo of the Seongsan fishing village association (성산어촌계), who work the Umutgae (우뭇개) fishing ground, demonstrate their diving there.

KTO describes the order of the session: an introduction to the haenyeo, the dive, gathering seafood, a commemorative photo, then seafood sales and tasting. It says the performance is free to watch with a Seongsan Ilchulbong admission ticket.

That ticket costs 5,000 won for an adult aged 25 to 64, and 2,500 won for youths and soldiers, according to the province's World Natural Heritage office. Seongsan Ilchulbong closes on the first Monday of every month, so avoid that day if the demonstration is the reason for your trip.

Seongsan Ilchulbong's own hours change by season. From May to August it opens 4:30am to 8pm with last tickets at 7pm; in March, April, September and October 5am to 7pm (last tickets 6pm); and from November to February 6am to 6pm (last tickets 5pm).

No official source found gives the demonstration's start times. KTO's static page does not list them, and the province's tourism portal could not be reached when this guide was checked, so ask at the Seongsan Ilchulbong ticket office on the day. If you want the demonstration, the Seongsan stop fits the east-coast day in a three-day Jeju itinerary.

How to watch without intruding

Haenyeo on the coast are at work, not performing, and the official sources give you enough to behave accordingly. UNESCO notes that local fishery cooperatives hold the fishing rights where haenyeo dive, so treat the shellfish and seaweed in those waters as the cooperative's harvest rather than something to gather yourself.

Use this sequence to plan a visit that respects that line.

The shelters matter more than they look. The museum describes 불턱 (bulteok) as round stone-walled enclosures where haenyeo changed, warmed themselves by a fire and passed on knowledge about the sea and decided matters together. Villages once had three or four each, and about 70 survive.

Around 1985, villages began building modern changing rooms (탈의장) with hot showers, which the museum says replaced the bulteok's role as rubber diving suits spread.

Photography is not addressed in any official rule found for this guide. The Seongsan session includes a photo stage, according to KTO, so that is the moment built for pictures; elsewhere, the respectful default is to ask before photographing a person at close range.

If you travel with children, the museum's free entry for children aged 12 and under makes it an easy stop; the guide to Jeju with young kids covers the rest of the island.

Tools and terms decoder

Signs at the museum and on the coast use Jeju and haenyeo vocabulary that rarely appears in English. The table below decodes the terms the official sources use, with the price where a source gives one.

The museum notes that the traditional 물소중이 was cut with side openings so divers could change without exposing their bodies and so it fitted as their bodies changed. Diving goggles, it says, only spread in the 20th century.

The most used tool is not the abalone bar but the 까꾸리 (kkakkuri), a hook the museum says divers use to pull seafood from rock crevices, turn over stones and pull themselves forward along the bottom. The 테왁 float doubles as a resting platform: divers lay their chests on it while swimming out to the work site. In 2008 the province designated 15 items of haenyeo clothing and tools as its folk heritage No. 10.

The historical record is long. The museum cites a 1629 account, 이건's 「제주풍토기」, describing haenyeo gathering abalone, and the 1702 painting series 『탐라순력도』, which shows haenyeo diving near today's Yongduam rock. It also notes that Joseon-era records describe men, called 포작인 (pojagin), gathering abalone as tribute.

What this guide does not cover

Historical counts before 2024 are not given here. The province's 2015 year-end figures exist only as a Korean word-processor attachment that was not opened, and older totals often quoted for the 1960s and 1970s appeared only in press reports, not in an official table read for this guide.

The Seongsan demonstration's times, and whether it runs in bad weather, are not published in any official source reachable on 23 September 2026. The province's tourism portal, visitjeju.net, refused connections when this guide was checked, so any schedule it holds could not be confirmed.

Haenyeo-run restaurants, paid diving experiences and village-run programmes are left out because no official list naming them was located. The museum's fee-exemption rules mention two training schools, Hansupul and Beophwan, but only as bodies whose students enter free, not with course dates or fees.

Rules for non-fishers gathering seafood at night on village fishing grounds, a live issue in Jeju, are not summarised because only press coverage of a planned ordinance was found, not the ordinance text.