when people suggested the haenyeo start using oxygen tanks, she, along with other divers around the island, refused. “Everything we do must be natural,” she’d told the collective, “otherwise we’ll harvest too much, deplete our wet fields, and earn nothing.” There, again, balance.

“It’s not a matriarchy. Rather, it’s a society focused on women.”

It is our duty to be keepers and managers of the sea. If we protect our wet fields, they will continue to provide for us.”

In the sea, you can be a grieving widow. Your tears will be added to the oceans of salty tears that wash in great waves across our planet. This I know. If you try to live, you can live on well.”

With that, we pulled our face masks from our foreheads, rubbed mugwort on the glass,

“Not many men can do without a wife, while all women can do without a husband.”

Pregnancy brings changes not only to a woman’s body but also to her mind.

“That’s one version,” the shaman continued. “Another says Grandmother Seolmundae, like all women, was exhausted by all she did for others, especially for her children. Her five hundred sons were always hungry. She was making them a cauldron of porridge when she became drowsy and fell into the pot. Her sons looked everywhere for her. The youngest so

“We harvest together, sort together, and sell together, because the sea itself is communal.”