February 16, 2025

FILMHOUNDS Magazine

All things film – In print and online

“The Haenyeo are really the spokespeople of the ocean” — Sue Kim and Malala Yousafzai Talk The Last of the Sea Women

The cast of The Last of the Sea Women

Apple TV+

Out now on AppleTV+, The Last of the Sea Women is a brilliant . Set in Jeju Island in South Korea, the film introduces the audience to the Haenyeo, a declining community of women who collect seafood to feed their communities. It is a tough job that involves them diving in the ocean for many hours in the day, which empowers them both personally and financially. However, the Haenyeo communities are now at risk as no young people are joining and willing to take on this work. At the same time, the threat that climate change poses to the ocean also represents a significant issue for these women.

FILMHOUNDS sat down with Sue Kim, the director and producer of the documentary, and producer Malala Yousafzai to discuss the film, what it means for them to tell the story of this community of women, and how they approached filming this documentary.

How did you first hear of the Haenyeo community?

Sue Kim: I have known about the Haenyeo community for quite a long time since I was a young girl. I very vividly remember seeing them for the first time when I was eight years old. My family and I had gone to Korea for the first time on a family trip, and we went down to Jeju Island. We were just walking along the coast, and we happened upon a Haenyeo community, and they were so striking. It was a large gaggle of women, they were all dressed in their orange and black wetsuits, and they were putting their masks on, and starting to get into the water. I had no idea who they were, or what they did, I just saw this group of women that looked so tough, cool, and strong, and they were super loud, fighting with each other. They gave off this energy of being very bold and confident. I really latched onto them as a young girl, I thought that they were some sort of secret underwater girl gang. I didn't even know what they did but I just wanted to be part of them. I fixated on them from that point on: I remember checking out a book from the library about them when I went home. I wanted to find out more about what they did and who they were. I grew up just loving them as role models and heroes.

Malala Yousafzai: I first heard about the Haenyeo through our director Sue Kim when she pitched the documentary to my production company, Extracurricular. I could not believe I had not heard about them and this matriarchal society before.

How did you decide to make a documentary on the Haenyeos?

SK: I started going back to Jeju as an adult to try and find them and talk to them. It was on a trip about 10 years ago when I went back to Jeju with my mom and we found a haenyeo community. And we started talking to this 84-year-old woman who had just come out of the water from diving for four hours that day. I asked her where the younger haenyeo were because I could see all the other women that she was diving with all looked like grandmas. She was really the first person to tell me: “This is it, we are the last generation of the haenyeo because we can't convince the younger women to do this work anymore.”

That is when I realized that this community of women that I loved and adored for decades was on the verge of extinction, that they're vanishing basically. That was the moment I decided that someone had to make a documentary about them. Someone has to document and memorialize this culture of incredible women while we still have them so that they themselves can tell us their story in their own words. That was the start of the journey of making this film.

MY: I was so inspired by their story and their way of life, I knew this was the perfect first project for Extracurricular because I wanted more people to learn about the haeneyo and their incredible community. I really connected with these women and how their friendship and community make them so resilient. I love that this story shows the importance of women of all ages working together and supporting each other to achieve the change they want to see.

 How important do you think it is to give these women a voice through this documentary?

MY: I am so proud to be able to give the haenyeo a platform to tell their story. I was able to meet two of the haenyeo, Jang Soon Deok and Lee Hee Soon, in Toronto for the film's premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. It was overwhelming to see the audience's reaction to their story. They were crying when they came on stage after the documentary ended because they never thought people around the world would know about their lives. This is why I love being able to bring these stories to life because it creates a shared humanity and allows us to see the world from other people's points of view.

The Last of the Sea Women is your first feature as a director and as a producer as well, did that come with any challenges for you?

SK: Making this feature wasn't quite as difficult as maybe I thought it would have been. I had made a short a few years prior but I actually made that short as a feature and then it got cut down to a short so in practice I had already made a feature. I had also made a documentary series in between [the short and this], so the actual practical making of the feature was really the same: a lot of footage a lot of filming before figuring out what the real cohesive storyline is and then just spending a lot of time nursing it and perfecting it in the edit.

How did you balance being both director and producer during the production and the filming of The Last of the Sea Women?

SK: I actually found it to be a natural fit for me. Before I became a director, I was a commercial producer for over 20 years, so I have more of a background actually in production than in directing. I had incredible, incredible producers on this project. I had incredible line producers on this project, which was great. I was supported by really talented, amazing female producers, women who just really carried this project. At the same time, it wasn't heavy lifting for me to pull in my own production experience as a producer. It also really helped because as a director, I knew what the creative vision was that I had for The Last of the Sea Women. So then I had to try and figure out the logistical steps needed to pull off that creative vision, and it really helped that I carried both duties as a producer to help get the directorial vision that I wanted. It worked out pretty well

What do you hope that audiences take away from The Last of the Sea Women after watching it?

SK: First and foremost, what I really wanted to come out of the making of this film and hopefully the viewing of this film is just an awareness of who this incredible community of women were. I grew up knowing about them and people in Korea know about the haenyeos, they're quite legendary in Korea, but I found that very few people outside of Korea knew who they were. I find their story so inspiring, incredible, so rich with culture and female empowerment. The fact that they were breadwinners in the 17th century is unheard of; to some degree they were the first working women of Asia. Their breadwinning and their success at being the financial support of the island turned the island into a semi-matriarchal island and I think that's incredible too. The fact that their story wasn't known globally always made me sad. I just thought they were unsung heroes, so much of why I wanted to make this film was just to make sure that they kind of got their flowers, that they received the acknowledgement and the recognition of what a trailblazing community they were.

But now, there's also a second component of The Last of the Sea Women that I hope people get, which is what the haenyeo really want the audiences to understand: the declining condition of the ocean and the disappearing marine life that's happening. This is all a result of pollution in the ocean, but also very much a result of climate change and global warming, which is heating up the ocean. The rise in temperature of the ocean, even just by a few degrees, is completely disrupting the balance of the ecosystem and killing off marine life and it's bringing in tropical marine life that didn't used to live in those oceans. The haenyeo themselves are always talking about that message and I really hope it comes through in the film. There are a lot of things that we, as humans, can see with our own eyes regarding  climate change, like wildfires and typhoons but we can't see what's happening under the ocean. The haenyeo are really the spokespeople of the ocean and they are trying to tell us that what we're doing as a species, as a planet, we are killing our planet and our ocean.

MY: I hope audiences appreciate the Haenyeo's spirit and feel a connection with them. We should remember to respect women who have sacrificed and worked hard to provide for their communities. There is so much women contribute that goes unnoticed or unappreciated. I want people to watch this film and think that they would like to call their mothers or grandmothers and tell them they love them and are grateful for everything they have done for them.

The Last of the Sea Women feels very urgent because of how at risk the Haenyeo community is, but some of it also feels a little hopeful towards the end. What do you think the future looks like for the community? Do you hope that this film sort of can steer us in the right direction in some way?

SK: I think the ending for me is bittersweet because the ocean is in decline and the Japanese Fukushima radioactive wastewater is starting to come into it. The current state of our planet and the ocean is disheartening and sad. But at the same time, the haenyeo themselves carry so much hope and optimism that it's hard for me to tell their story without the feeling that maybe we can change the course that is being set for the ocean. I think there's a difference between hope and optimism. I don't know if I'm optimistic that we're going to change our ways and actually reverse course on climate change and the state of the ocean, but I'm hopeful. I hope that the haenyeo community still has marine life to catch. I hope that maybe by watching this film, there might be more young women who are interested in taking on this work. I hope that by watching this film, people also understand how valuable the haenyeo culture is and that there's more investment put into it. Maybe the Korean government could put more financial support or funding for women who want to take on this work. There's a whole host of things that could happen that could help in continuing and protecting this culture, so I have a lot of hope for that, but whether or not it's gonna happen, I'm not sure.

MY: It is always important to have hope. If we don't have hope, what else is there? What I love about the haenyeo is that they keep fighting. They don't let their age stop them. It inspires me in my own activism. I am only 27 years old. I know I can keep going and fighting because these women in the 70s, 80s and even 90s are doing it.

How did you choose the specific women to feature in The Last of the Sea Women and these specific stories?

SK: I met with quite a lot of Haenyeo when we were in the casting process. I focused on four specific Haenyeo women and the communities that they were a part of, just because each subject had something really interesting and relevant about their personality or about their life, that I thought related to the themes running through the film. Our main subject, Jang Soon Deok, the Haenyeo who goes to the UN, was a very active and ardent environmentalist. She already had a deep passion for speaking out about what was happening to the ocean. I wanted to follow her because I could tell she had kind of like a renegade spirit of doing whatever it takes for people to understand what we are doing to the ocean.

Another subject that you see in the film, Kang Joo-hwa, is known as the best haenyeo, she's the one who can outdive anyone. I wanted to follow her because I thought she represented something about the Haenyeo that I find fascinating: the pure athleticism of what they do. She's so athletic and agile and strong underwater. Not all haenyeos dive as athletically as she does but when she does, you can really see the skill and the strength and the just pure athleticism that is needed for this occupation. I think she brought a really beautiful and complicated storyline in The Last of the Sea Women because she was the strongest haenyeo, but then she broke her foot and couldn't dive anymore. Suddenly, she became a symbol of actually how fragile and vulnerable the haenyeo are and how difficult this work is. She also [symbolised] how little social and financial support they get from the government and their fishing cooperatives when they're injured. Her story took a really interesting turn because she was sort of the symbol of strength for us in the beginning and then she became the symbol of vulnerability and fragility because of her injury.

How did you approach them about it and did they react to being featured in the documentary?

SK: I found that they actually all were very enthusiastic about being part of The Last of the Sea Women. Partly because they thought it was very interesting that I was from the US. I'm Korean-American, but they saw me as someone from a different country. The idea of a documentary being made about them that has a more global audience, and myself coming from the Western part of the world, I think they thought that would be extra special because they're used to being focused on solely in Korea. But they also just had so much passion for wanting to talk about the work that they do, they have so much pride in their culture. One of the haenyeos that we followed has so much knowledge about the history of the haenyeo culture that they just really relished the opportunity to talk about this lifestyle that they have lived for decades. I think they really appreciated having the cameras on them and showing off how strong they were at 80 years old and what they could do. They all seemed to really like it.

One of the main characters ends up speaking at the UN just like you did when you were younger. Is there anything in this film that reminded you of your personal story too?

MY: Even though the haenyeo are on an island in South Korea, there was so much about their story that resonated with my own. I certainly have had experiences similar to Jang Soon Deok, who travels to Geneva to speak at the UN. I have been in a room where you are given a short amount of time to speak and you wonder if anyone is actually listening and will answer your plea. I also think about how you become an activist. You often do not do it by choice. You become an activist out of necessity, because there is no other choice. I think it is such a powerful scene in the film where the haenyeo are learning about the wastewater release for the first time and they are asking why no one is standing up and doing something about this. They realise they are the only ones who will speak out for themselves. Many activists around the world relate to this feeling of finding your voice.

 I also noticed that the cast and crew are almost exclusively made up of women. Do you think that that had an impact in the final product of The Last of the Sea Women?

SK: Hiring an almost all-female crew was very intentional for a lot of reasons. I think symbolically, it just felt great to have this sisterhood behind the camera, especially when what we were watching in front of the camera was also a sisterhood. It created this very magical air of a very family-like environment, which is wonderful. But it was also a logistical reason, too because we were covering women who were diving, they were in their wetsuits, and they were constantly going in and out of their communal areas, undressing, and showering. We wanted to create a safe space for them, where they felt that they could just continue to be who they were in and out of their communal areas, that they didn't have to worry about strange men seeing them disrobing. It was very important for me to make them feel comfortable and at home in their own space.

What did it mean for you to have Malala Yousafzai involved in the production of the documentary?

SK: Working with Malala, who is such a beloved feminist icon, really, was perfect. Because she is this global humanitarian who is known for always advocating for the rights of girls and women. Having her as our figurehead, our spiritual leader on The Last of the Sea Women, was perfect because it underscored the themes of the film, which is really about sisterhood, community, resilient women, female empowerment, and financial agency. All of those themes are represented in Malala and the kind of activism that she stands for too. It was just a perfect pairing all-around of a very female-friendly, loving, family-like environment and I do think you feel that sisterhood in the film.

This is not the first time you are involved in producing a film, do you see yourself working on more films in the future?

MY: Yes, I am very excited to continue to tell stories like these through my production company. Next month, I have another documentary coming to Apple TV+ called Bread & Roses. It is produced with Jennifer Lawrence and directed by Sahra Mani and it tells the story of women in Afghanistan who are protesting the Taliban after it came to power in August 2021. I hope you will watch it.

The Last of the Sea Women is on Apple TV+ now.