'Our sea is gone'

Editor's note:In this weekly feature China Daily gives voice to Asia and its people. The stories presented come mainly from the Asia News Network (ANN), of which China Daily is among its 20 leading titles.

Under the scorching morning sun, dozens of women sat shoulder to shoulder on mats outside a high-rise in Seoul's Songpa District on June 29 and 30.

Some were in their 60s and 70s. Others were well into their 80s. All wore white towels on their heads and red headbands bearing the phrase "damage compensation". Some held signs that read: "Our livelihoods have been taken away. Compensate for the damage!"

The 52 women are haenyeo, South Korea's traditional female divers, who traveled more than 300 kilometers to Seoul from a fishing village in Homigot in the southeastern port city of Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province.

The divers claim that a five-year harbor renovation project devastated the sea they had relied on for decades. They were protesting in front of Ssangyong Engineering & Construction, or Ssangyong E&C, a South Korean company that carried out the project.

June 30 marked the second and final day of their protest in Seoul.

"We've been diving for at least 40 to 50 years. The sea is our rice field, our farmland and our bank," said Boo Soon-rok, 78, visibly fatigued by the heat.

On the first day of the protest, the women wore black rubber diving suits traditionally worn by haenyeo, despite a daytime temperature of 33 C. By the second day, they had traded heavy suits for everyday clothes.

Their orange tewak, the floating diving baskets they had carried from home, were lined up in front of them, a reminder of who the protesters were. Alongside the diving suit, the tewak is one of the most recognizable symbols of haenyeo.

Boo said they left Homigot at 5 am on June 29 and traveled to Seoul on two chartered buses. They returned home later on June 30.

She recalled that a day's dive once brought home enough seafood to buy rice and pay household bills. Those days, she said, are long gone.

"The ecosystem started to disappear when the construction began, and there's almost nothing left," she told The Korea Herald. "We are left wondering how we will support ourselves in the years ahead because we can't ask our children for it."

By "the construction", she was referring to the Homigot Port renovation project, which ran from April 2021 to June this year. Commissioned by the Pohang Regional Office of Oceans and Fisheries and carried out by Ssangyong E&C, the project involved dismantling and rebuilding aging breakwaters to improve the port's infrastructure.

For Seo Chun-sun, 70, the dispute is about more than lawsuits and compensation. It is about the loss of a sea that had sustained generations of haenyeo.

Before the construction project, a day's dive could bring in a harvest of as much as 10 kilograms, she said. Now, even on a good day, she returns with barely 2 kilograms.

"How are we supposed to live like this? We make our living from the sea, and if there is nothing to harvest, there is nothing to earn," she said.

Seo said many of the women there were the primary breadwinners, earning much of the household income through diving while their husbands took on seasonal work or helped with fishing operations.

"Our husbands are jobless. We're the ones who have to support our families. We should be out in the water making a living, but instead we're here in Seoul protesting," Seo lamented.

She believes repeated changes to the construction site, along with the rebuilding of breakwaters, disturbed the seabed, which she says damaged the rocky habitat where sea species once thrived.

"They didn't move the construction just once," she said. "They kept shifting it from one place to another. Every time they did, more of the seabed was damaged."