Mom is a Haenyeo
A story about the “Hanyeo” diver women that live in Jeju Island, South Korea. It represents profound values for the artist: independence, pride for their work and a strong sense of community. After a Japanese invasion, the island was left with barely any men, and women developed a diving technique, which depended only on their pulmonary capacity. These women have been the biggest input to the island’s economy, and it is a dying art. Hanyeos had been up to 25000 in the past but nowadays there’s only 4000 left, and their average age is 72 years old.
This book tells the story of three generations of divers; grandmother, mother and daughter, through them exposes the Haenyeos way of understanding life and their respect for the sea.
After it's 13th edition in Korea, "Mom is a Haenyeo" is now being translated to Japanese and Spanish and Catalan by Santi Balmes.