The Haenyeo Museum and Sehwa: A Half-Day with Jeju's Women Divers

Drive along the east coast of Jeju and sooner or later you will pass women in black wetsuits carrying round orange floats. They are haenyeo, the island's women divers, who go down without air tanks to gather conch, abalone and seaweed on a single breath. Their way of life was inscribed on UNESCO's list of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2016. The best place to understand it is the Jeju Haenyeo Museum in Hado-ri, and the beach at Sehwa sits right below it, so one easy half-day covers both the story and the sea it comes from.

Inside the museum

The exhibition is laid out in three galleries. The first is about home life, the second about the sea as a workplace and the tools of the dive, and the third follows a haenyeo's life from girlhood to old age. Much of what is on display was donated by the divers themselves, and one exhibit is a real haenyeo house moved here piece by piece, which gives the place a lived-in feel that most museums lack.

• Children's Haenyeo Hall — a separate space at a child's eye level, where kids can try out the suits and tools as play.
• Observatory — do not skip it. The whole of Sehwa village and its turquoise bay opens up below you; the photo at the top of this page was taken from here.
• Video room — footage of real dives, the closest most visitors will get to the moment a diver disappears under the surface.

An unhurried visit takes an hour to an hour and a half. Signs carry English, but the videos and the observatory need no translation.

A few words worth knowing

• Muljil — the work itself: diving without equipment to harvest from the seabed.
• Sumbisori — the whistling sound a diver makes when she surfaces after a minute or two and lets out her held breath all at once.
• Bulteok — a ring of stone walls on the shore where divers lit a fire to warm up and change, and where they agreed on tides and fishing grounds.
• Sanggun, junggun, hagun — the three ranks of skill. The deepest water belonged to the sanggun.

A provincial survey counted 2,371 active haenyeo at the end of 2025, 63% of them aged 70 or older. Their numbers fall by a couple of hundred every year, which makes what this museum records more valuable each season.

The 1932 uprising and its memorial

The hill beside the museum is the memorial park for the Jeju Haenyeo Anti-Japanese Movement. In January 1932, divers began protesting at the Sehwa market against a colonial-era divers' association that fixed prices and skimmed their earnings. The protest spread through Gujwa, Seongsan and Udo over three months and is regarded as the largest anti-colonial movement led by women in Korea. A ceremony is held at the memorial tower every year. Walk the park after the galleries and it becomes clear that the haenyeo were defending a community, not only a livelihood.

Sehwa beach and village

Sehwa beach is a few minutes from the museum: white sand, shallow turquoise water, and cafés along the coastal road. It is a gentle place for children to paddle in summer. On market days ending in 5 or 0 (the 5th, 10th, 15th, 20th, 25th and 30th), the Sehwa five-day market sets up beside the beach, on the same ground where the divers first gathered in 1932. Belongjang, the weekend flea market Sehwa was once known for, has no confirmed recent schedule, so check before you plan around it.

Visitor information and getting there

• Hours — 09:00–18:00, last tickets at 17:00.
• Closed — every Monday (the next weekday if Monday is a holiday), January 1, and Seollal and Chuseok.
• Admission — adults 1,100 won, youth 500 won, free for 12 and under and 65 and over (as of October 2026).
• By car — about 20 km north from Onpyeong along the Iljudong-ro coastal highway, roughly 30 minutes.
• By bus — route 201 on Iljudong-ro links Onpyeong-ri and Sehwa; check the stop nearest the museum in a bus app.

To watch haenyeo at work, the diving show on the Umutgae shore below Seongsan Ilchulbong is closer to the house. Our east Jeju with kids guide covers the show, and for a wet-weather day you can pair the museum with the stops in our rainy day guide.