Monthly Archives: June 2021

Haenyeo, the Sea Women of Korea

By Fanny Wong, New York.

Orange pumpkin-like buoys bob in the water off the island of Jeju, 55 miles off the tip of the South Korea peninsula. Baskets attached to them wait for their owners. The sea women, in groups of ten or more rise to the surface and make a distinctive whistle…“Hoowi, hoowi!” It’s an ancient technique to expel carbon dioxide from their lungs and to alert one another of their presence. They’ve been under water for 30 seconds or longer. It’s time to breathe. Everyone is accounted for. No accidental death today.

Haenyeo Divers of Korea — **A Haenyeo Diver.** *Illustration by Nina A. Forsberg.*

The women wade ashore or climb onto a waiting boat, hauling their baskets of the day’s underwater harvest. They take off their old-fashioned headlight-shaped scuba masks to reveal lined and weathered faces. These women are old! Who are they? What do they do underwater?

For hundreds of years, the sea women, known as the haenyeo, dive as deep as forty feet to harvest seaweed, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, octopus, shellfish and abalone from the ocean floor. They free dive without an oxygen tank, equipped only with fins, gloves, and a belt of lead weights to assist diving. They use different simple tools; such as a small harpoon for piercing fish, a sickle for collecting seaweed, a long hoe for prying abalone of rocks.

Jeju is a 700 square miles island of volcanic rock and soil, off the southwestern coast of southwest Korea. It has a beautiful coastline and is listed on UNESCO’s World Nature Heritage. Windy and rocky, there isn’t much land for productive farming, except for mandarin orange farms. But the sea provides an alternative farm.

Life of the haenyeo is hard. They harvest from five to seven hours a day, about 18 days per month, depending on the weather and tide conditions. It was only in the 1970s that the government subsidized wetsuits, which protect them from the cold water. The women used to dive in loose cotton clothing and could stay in the water up to an hour during the winter months. They had to sit by a fire to dry off before jumping back into the water. Wearing wet suits, now they can earn more by staying longer in the water, and to dive into old age.

Underwater is a dangerous place to make a living. The divers must be careful not to push too far for that prized abalone. Deprived of oxygen, a diver can suffer a heart attack. She must know when to have enough breath to come up slowly, and perhaps give up a precious find stuck under a rock. One side effect of longer dives is decompression sickness. They also contend with dangers, such as jellyfish, poor weather, big fish and even an occasional shark.

Most of the divers are old, with the oldest in their eighties, and even nineties. The average age is seventy. These elderly women learn from a young age to understand water pressure, oxygen level in their lungs and resurfacing distance. The girls as young as eleven start to learn to dive in shallow water, then in more challenging depths. Some women have dived all through pregnancy and given birth on a boat! This job used to be handed down from mother to daughter, but now, the young women prefer a more comfortable life in the island’s two cities or on the mainland. From more than 14,000 in the 1970s, there are fewer than 2500 haenyeo today. Some women abandoned the dangerous sea diving in old age. They and the ones who died were not replaced.

The haenyeo culture relies on cooperation and hierarchy. The beginners and the older women belong to the bottom level of divers, the hagun. The middle level junggun diver can hold her breath between 40 seconds to a minute. The top-level sangun diver can work the most difficult areas, dive deepest and may be able to hold her breath up to two minutes. The more experienced offer their guidance to the less experienced. It can take a new diver five years to be fully competent.

The women generally sell their catch through a fishery cooperative in each village. There are about 100 cooperatives. Each cooperative has its own regulations about the boundary of the fishing ground, qualification and catching methods. When a problem arises, the haenyeo get together in a form of town hall meeting to make decisions everyone understands and accepts. The community spirit is strong. Before and after a day’s work, they change their cloths in the traditional bulteok, an open-air circle marked by a 4 feet high stones wall, with a fire in the center. Recently built bulteoks are cement buildings with showers and heated dressing rooms. They chat about personal matters and issues related to work. The conversation is affectionate and warm.

A diver earns about the equivalent U.S. $12,500 a year. That’s not a lot of money for their hard work. A second job farming on small plots of land supplement their income. But they are proud to be their families’ providers. With no education, the women had little choice but follow their mothers’ footsteps. Now, they want their children and grandchildren to get a good education, even to go to a university.

Where are then men? Some elderly husbands wait on shore for their wives to return. They help lug the heavy loads onto land, help weigh and sort the catch. It wasn’t always this way. Men from Jeju harvested shellfish as far back as 1460, as mentioned in a court document. Why the change? One explanation is that in the 17^th century, the men were taken away to fight Korea’s foreign wars. Another explanation is that women’s body fat enabled them to endure the cold water better. Diving for seafood became exclusively female and remains so today.

There is some stigma attached to their work. In modern South Korea, women are generally prized for being delicate. The divers are anything but delicate. They have grit, physical and mental stamina. They talk loudly on land because the build-up of air pressure in their ears means that noises are muffled. Not lady-like at all!

But, the haenyeo has gained respect in their efforts to protect the marine ecosystem. They are marine specialist by experience. Knowing the cycle of marine life, they do not over harvest. For example, abalone and conch are caught from October to June, sea urchins from May to July and sea slugs during the winter season. They don’t take anything under-sized. Even different seaweeds are harvested at specific times of the year. They are lauded for their eco-friendly methods and community involvement in managing their practices.

Normally in South Korea, men dominate, but not in Jeju. For centuries, they had high status and independence in their community. They are the breadwinners, take care of the children and make household decisions. In the male-dominated culture, they were modern before their time. Even today, when many elderly South Koreans over 65 are poor, these elderly women’s financial independence is remarkable.

The haenyeo’s legacy is not just economic. It’s social. It’s cultural. Every February in the lunar calendar, the haenyeo hold a ceremony in honor of the God of the wind, Yeongdeung. He visits Jeju Island on the first day of February. In mid-February, they send a small straw boat loaded with offerings out to sea to accompany him as he departs Jeju for the year. The women pray to the God, believing that he helps them hold their breath underwater and to keep them safe. They also pray at shrines.

Interest in the haenyeo has grown. In 2006, the Haenyeo Museum opened. It explains the history and culture through models of their traditional homes; displays boats, tools, masks and diving wear. Underwater photographers published books about them. In 2015, the Jeju government began to help pay for their accident and medical insurance. In 2016, UNESCO awarded the divers a Cultural Heritage of Humanity designation, recognition they long deserved.

But the haenyeo themselves are pessimistic about the future. Tourism is increasing and generates more revenue than the diving catch. With few young women willing to go into the profession, the culture will eventually die out. Moreover, they witness the effect of climate change in the ocean. Pollution is reducing the amount of and quality of edible sea life.

How can the haenyeo tradition be preserved in the age of modernity? Modifications can make life of the haenyeo easier and more attractive to the next generation, just as the wetsuits made a lot of difference. Perhaps something mechanical can help them lug the heavy baskets of wet seaweed and algae onto shore. A full basket of seaweed can weigh as much as 65 pounds. Better medical intervention can prevent and lessen the physical toil to their bodies. Some of the ailments include headaches, tinnitus, digestive problems and increased risk of strokes.

Meanwhile these tough women who ride motorcycles to get around remain graceful underwater ballerinas in the silence of the deep. They continue to be Jeju’s most valued treasures.

By Fanny Wong, Asian American author, New York.

The Unforgettable Memories of School

The Unforgettable Memories of School

 Waking up in the morning was a pain,
 Four more days to go, we’d say in our brain.
 Oh! Those long morning assemblies,
 Where we melted in summers and in winters stood numbly.
 I bet we all had a teacher who was like our worst nightmare,
 I will never forget all the gossip about her that we shared.
 Faking signatures was an inborn talent we all had,
 And making excuses was like our jam.
 In lunch breaks we shared our food,
 On one’s birthday to get two chocolates we argued.
 We passed chits around the class,
 From one end to another we would sit and laugh.
 The times before the exams were filled with anxiety and stress,
 Oh! Those dreadful sleepless nights, the misery we couldn’t express.
 We made many friends, but the true ones stayed,
 The others were good, but they eventually fade.
 For the weekend we would desperately long,
 The best two days of the week, oh! So, fast they would already be gone.
 We stuck with each other in times of laughter and in times of strife,
 Unaware of it all we made memories for life.
  
By Simerah Pinto, age 13, Dubai, U.A.E.

Photo: *Simerah Pinto, age 13, Dubai, U.A.E.*

Life Aboard an Iceberg

By Carla Sabotta, Olympia, Washington.

An Iceberg in the Antarctic Region. Photo by Carla Sabotta, Washington.

From jellyfish to harbor seals, a variety of animals thrive in and around icebergs. The animals find food and shelter, and some of them nest, on these floating chunks of ice.

Icebergs break off from glaciers and ice shelves and bob in the sea. An ice shelf appears where a glacier flows down to a coastline. Icebergs stay afloat even though they weigh many hundreds of thousands of tons. They float for the same reason ice cubes do in a glass of water—ice is lighter than water.

Icebergs the size of houses and large buildings form each year in the Arctic at the North Pole and in Antarctica at the South Pole. Table-shaped icebergs have steep sides and flat tops. Other shapes of icebergs have domes and spires.

Algae and phytoplankton grow on and around all shapes and sizes of icebergs. Algae are like plants and make food from sunlight. Phytoplankton are tiny living things and include plants and animals. Inch-long, shrimp-like creatures called krill eat the algae and phytoplankton. Thousands of krill mill about together and make up the largest part of the diet of many animals.

Invertebrates such as jellyfish come to the icebergs to feed on krill. Invertebrates lack backbones. Larger animals such as fish, squid and penguins also like krill. Penguins catch the slippery creatures with their spiny tongues and powerful jaws, while keeping a look out for seals and whales.

Leopard seals and killer whales seek out icebergs to hunt the penguins. Squawking flocks of petrels and other flying seabirds circle overhead looking for food. The seals also like to sleep on pieces of sea ice floating in the shadows of the icebergs, to get protection from high winds.

A Leopard Seal on a Small Iceberg. Photo by Carla Sabotta, Washington.

In addition to supplying food, icebergs also give protection and a place to raise pups. Young icefish dart into small holes to hide from animals hunting them. These pale-looking fish have clear blood because they lack red blood cells and hemoglobin. Groups of harbor seals haul out onto icebergs to escape killer whales, sharks and polar bears. They rest on the ice with their heads and rear flippers lifted up in a banana-like pose.

During the spring, female harbor seals give birth to pups on icebergs. Groups of mother seals raise their pups on the ice to protect themselves from predators. When they’re not swimming and diving, the seal pups rest on the ice. Out of the water the pups use little energy to stay warm. They can instead use the energy from their mother’s milk to grow and put on the blubber they will need to survive the winter.

Are icebergs becoming home to new animals? Possibly. Scientists recently reported for the first time seeing a colony of ivory gulls and chicks nesting on a rock-covered iceberg. The iceberg drifted in open water near Northeast Greenland. These gleaming white gulls usually build their nests on cliff ledges or distant islands near coasts. Scientists think the gulls may have chosen an iceberg to avoid Arctic foxes and polar bears, and to stay close to their favorite food—small fish and krill.

Adelie Penguins on an Iceberg. Photo by Carla Sabotta

Carla adds, “I was inspired to write this article after learning about icebergs on a trip to Antarctica.”

Fly

By Ritika Rawat, age 9, New Jersey

I wish I could fly away,

And the universe will lead me to the way.

I wish I could soar up in the sky and fly,

oh so very high.

I want to flap my wings up to the sky,

but when I’m down my heart stings.

Up, and up I go, and my journey begins,

Everything is great and we all win.

I come down from my dreams

because not everything is what it seems.

By Ritika Rawat, will enter grade 5 this fall, Indian American, New Jersey.

The Sock Problem

By Karena Christen, 12, lives in Riga, Latvia.

Most people lose socks, but not in my family. No, we find socks! First, we’d find one sock lying here or there throughout the house. They never seemed to match any of our other socks, which were mostly plain white cotton. Under my pillow, I found a pink sock with purple triangles. My youngest sister, Laurie, found a yellow sock with an orange cat on it in her closet. Every couple of days, someone would find an odd sock in their bed, their drawers, or on their chair. But one night, the socks seemed to get bolder. Mother had made borsch, and when she ladled a portion of beet soup for me, a blue sock with white sailboats stained pink flopped into my bowl. The next day at school, I dug into my bag to grab my permission slip and pulled out a brown sock with green horses on it. Everyone laughed. When I got home, the floor was littered with bright socks, none of which looked familiar.

At dinner that night, my family agreed we had to do something about this sock problem. People weren’t able to come over to our house because we were afraid they’d walk in the front door and see all our socks in high piles around the house. So the next day, we started leaving the house with bags of socks. We’d go around town leaving a sock here or there, hoping someone would take them. Soon, we realized no one wanted the socks. But the house was getting fuller and fuller, and the socks seemed to follow us. When I got off a tram, I had to grab the handful of socks that had appeared on the seat next to me.

Eventually, my parents told us we’d just have to move. The house was making the socks appear, they decided. So we bought a house on the other side of town. We were all excited because we were sick of the socks, and because our new house was so cool. It was a lot bigger than our old one, and it even had a hot tub!

One night, I was sitting in the hot tub, which was my favorite place in the whole house. Suddenly, I felt a tapping on my leg. I looked down and realized it was a sock being knocked against me by the jets. Right away, I got out of the water, grabbed the sock, stormed upstairs to my parents’ room, and held out the blue sock with purple donuts. My parents were furious. We were supposed to be free from our curse. We called a family meeting. Everyone gathered around the kitchen table. I picked up my glass of water and was about to take a sip when I saw a sock floating in it. It was yellow, with black smiley faces. I felt like that sock was laughing at me.

“What can we do about this?” Father asked, holding up a sock that he had slipped on going down the stairs.

“We could just throw them away,” I offered.

“That won’t solve the problem,” my older brother, Jeff, said.

“What if we sold them?” Laurie asked. We all looked at her. Why had we not thought of that?

“I could build a website,” said Marzie, my middle sister.

“We could pair them up so people who like weird socks will buy them,” Jeff said.

“We’ll make a bunch of money!” shouted Laurie. That night, Marzie started working on the website. Jeff, my parents and I rounded up all the socks we could find while Laurie shouted directions at everyone. Soon, we were up and running, the most successful sock-dealer on the Internet. And, we never had to worry about finding socks again.

—Karena Christen, 12, lives in Riga, Latvia. She enjoys reading, math, and pastries. She has lost many socks in her days, much to her distress.

The Perfect Family

The Perfect Family

By Zsuzsanna Juhasz, age 15, Maryland.

The father figure stands above,

No one can compare, just because.

Goes to work, and brings home the money,

While the rest stay at home, and wait for daddy.

We eat when he does, we smile when he looks,

We do what he says, or we get into trouble.

His word above ours. That’s how it has always been,

Because a change in tradition goes against everything he says.

The mother of the house doesn’t leave,

She’s not a human, she’s property.

When they wed, the maiden names goes too,

That’s the way it’s been, what should we do?

She cooks, she cleans, she obeys every word,

No speaking out, or she gets hurt.

She’s the uplifting spirit that we all need,

Unless she’s hushed, she just washes and feeds.

The eldest daughter, the pride and joy,

The one to go on and have kids of her own.

She must leave college, to marry a man,

She must do what she’s told, because she’s a woman.

Soon she will learn, what she must do,

It’s her “honor,” it’s her “duty” to be told what to do.

She takes the abuse, she holds it all in,

A sound out of her, would ruin the perfect image.

The youngest son, who learns from the father,

Does anything he says, and learns from his lectures.

He takes careful notes, so he knows what to do,

Like how to sit on the couch and work a grill too.

Looking at girls, poking at skirts,

Blaming their impulses on simply being a flirt.

Growing older, carrying his father’s beliefs,

One day he’ll become who his father turned out to be.

Men go to work, and women just stay at home,

Why change now? That’s the way it’s always been!

“Stop nagging and speaking, and clean the house!”

It’s written in cold blood to be as quiet as a mouse.

Nothing will really change, it’s all an illusion,

To make you grow up to be just like your father.

“What do you mean you don’t like it? That’s how it’s always been!

One day you’ll know when you’re married and have three kids.”

By Zsuzsanna Juhasz, age 15, Maryland. She adds: “My inspiration for this poem was the study of family norms in history, during the 50s and 60s. I’m currently enrolled in AP United States History, and when I wrote the poem, we were learning about how the average middle class family lived, and what life was like for the typical family. I thought it was incredibly interesting topic, especially when learning about Betty Friedan and how she challenged this observation, eventually publishing her own novel, The Feminie Mystique.

“I am Hungarian; I was born in the capitol, Budapest. My parents are from there, and my family and I moved here when I was just one year old.”

My View

 My View
 By Julia Dun Rappaport, grade 9, Massachusetts.

 I like to gaze out my window, the thick black telephone
 Wires criss-crossing my
 View.
 A bare tree shoots up from the Earth of the
 Yard. I wait for it to bloom. I eagerly await the leafy greenness to fill the pane. Two
 Blue jays are perched on a nearby branch.
 I see the ruffle of the sunbathed brush, and picture Wind
 Combing my hair with her
 Gentle fingers.
 The sky is a pale hue of
 Pastel azure. Swollen clouds dot its rounded edges. A faint tune from wind chimes
 Dances on the air.
 It rained yesterday, and the petrichor lingers still, the scent
 Grasping the atmosphere. I can nearly taste the sweetness of the
 Fresh world. I
 Imagine the earthy, crisp pleasantness on my
 Tongue.
 But I taste nothing but the staleness of the room. I see
 Nothing but the blankness of my computer
 Screen.
 I hear nothing but the clacking of my keys and the soft
 Whirring of technology around me.
 Surrounded in this modern world.
 Trapped.

Julia is a writer, poet, and artist. Her designs and paintings have won several art contests. She adds:

“This year has changed many things about me. From my lengthening golden-brown hair to my taller height, many noticeable things about me are different now than they were before the pandemic. Other things have changed, too. My life used to be riddled with insecurities, worries, and slight, nagging doubts. I am not saying that everything is gone now, but the virus has brought more than just sorrow. COVID-19 is a horrific thing, and it has terrorized our world. But, as my teachers waved to me through a screen, I realized that my life has forever changed. I no longer need to be validated through praise of others. This leads me to today. I am inspired to submit to Skipping Stones because I would like to prove to myself that I am a creative, intelligent individual who deserves a spot in Skipping Stones. I have learned to be a writer, to see and think differently. I am still learning. I am a young writer, and I would like to thank you for this opportunity. This is a chance to see myself as more than some kid. This could be a representation of progress. I am not saying that I need to be accepted; the simple act of submitting my work is proof of growth. All in all, I am inspired to submit to Skipping Stones because quarantine has helped me learn and grow, and I am ready to share that growth with you.”