On Jeju Island, 50 miles south of the Korean peninsula, senior women regularly dive up to 60 feet beneath the ocean’s surface. They collect sea urchins, sea snails called abalone and other food—and ...

Real-Life Mermaid’ South Korean Divers Have a Remarkable Underwater ‘Superpower’ Written Into Their DNA Jeju Island in Korea ...

Past work from Ilardo has shown that nomadic Bajau divers in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines have especially large spleens. Even Bajau people who don’t dive seem to share this trait, ...

The Haenyeo, an all-female group of divers on South Korea’s Jeju Island, spend much of their lives underwater without ...

Many women who grow up on Jeju Island off the southern tip of South Korea start diving at a young age and continue doing so throughout their lives. A group of women around 70 years old laugh and ...

Often likened to mermaids in media reports and popular culture, South Korea’s famed Haenyeo (“sea women”) spend much of the ...

A new study found the women, who sell their catch through fishery co-ops, have suffered genetic changes as a result of their ...

Ilardo decided to compare the Haenyeo to other elderly women on Jeju Island who aren't divers but ... rates of stroke mortality in all of South Korea. And since stroke can result from high blood ...

These are the stories of South Korea’s 'mermaids', who for centuries have braved the harsh conditions to harvest shellfish. On the island of Jeju, resourceful haenyeo 'sea-women' have braved ...

Known in Korean as the “Haenyeo” - literally “women of the sea” - the divers live on Jeju, a UNESCO-recognized island that lies about 50 miles south of the South Korean mainland.

the female seafisherfolk of Jeju – an island (population 600,000, pronounced Jay-Joo) off the south coast of Korea, a place which simultaneously manages to be beautiful, ugly, unique ...

A group of women on South Korea's largest island, Jeju, follow a unique tradition to put food on the table: They freedive to depths of nearly 33 feet (10 meters) without using any special equipment.