Travel: Long haul - To swim among the mermaids

The `haenyo' of Cheju in South Korea earn their living by diving for sea shells. Mark Dudley went to paradise island to find them

The mainland Koreans view Cheju, the most southerly island of the Republic of Korea, as paradise. It is the honeymoon isle dominated by Mount Halla, an extinct volcano where, supposedly, one can kick a football and it will land in the sea. Personally, I viewed it from a different perspective. I had read about the haenyo, Cheju's renowned sea-diving women - and was intrigued.

Kicking a football from Mt Halla, I later found, was a sad misconception. For starters, you have to negotiate the sprawl of Cheju City. There's New Cheju (Shin Cheju) where you can sleep in top-class hotels; and there's Old Cheju (Ku Cheju) which offers a far more reasonable outlook.

Luckily, I had someone to help me. In-gum was a 24-year-old university student, a friend of a friend of the man who worked at the Tourist Information desk at Cheju International airport. One sorry-looking foreigner, one phone call, and Bob's-your-uncle - I had a free guide.

This was useful. Arriving in Cheju, like anywhere in Korea, can be a disorientating experience. Few people speak English. Most signs are in the hangul script. Just to get your bearings presents a major challenge. So having In-gum, someone who was only too happy to speak English, seemed quite a result.

In one afternoon, she found me a minbak (a room in a family home), had taken me around the city's folkcraft and natural history museum and had pointed out groups of Japanese taking photographs of each other at an area called Yongdu'am Rock. This was where the haenyo (usually) dived. I knew things could never get that good.

It seemed that the haenyo were taking a few days off. Yet that was fine because there was a lot to explore. Cheju, 85 kilometres off the southernmost tip of the peninsula and in the strait between Korea and Japan, has often been compared to Hawaii. There is the 1,950m Mt Halla, (albeit extinct, while the ones in Hawaii are still active); there are waterfalls and extraordinary rock formations. To come from Cheju was pretty "cool", according to In- gum.

Being "cool" was a hard theory to test but Cheju was undoubtedly unique. There are the harubang, for example, two of which we had passed on our way to Yongdu'am Rock. These are the grandfather stones, three-foot blocks of lava rock carved with faces. Traditionally they are placed at the gates of a village to protect those within. Then there are the low-lying walls. Follow the coast road east from Cheju City and you will see them structuring the countryside, haphazardly defining the fields of watermelon, carrots, onions, and green bean. In fact every step of rock you walk on has that porous-look associated with lava. Hallasan may have erupted thousands of years ago but it certainly left an impression.

Manjung Cave, for example, at 8,928 metres in length and 50 minutes by bus from Cheju City, is the largest known lava cave in the world. Despite that, I did find its appeal a little limiting. Inside, spotlights led the way while piped music and a sing-song Korean voice only added to the 20th-century commercialisation. Indeed, once I got used to the giant tunnel disappearing beyond me, the odd lava ball shaped like a tortoise and the streaks on the wall that resembled electric cables, I began to wish there was an exit at the other end. Instead, after 800 metres, you reach an eight-metre-high lava pillar, then you turn around and come back.

My disappointment at the lava tunnel, however, was tempered by discoveries of another kind. That morning, we had taken another walk down to Yongdu'am Rock. There, a group of women wearing straw hats draped with towels, crouched under parasols and sold shells, abalone, sea cucumber and octopus from bowls of sea water. Then, later that day, we were descending Songsan Ilch'ubong, a 20-minute drive from Manjung Cave and listed as one of Cheju's 10 most scenic peaks, when we found a dark-sanded cove. There, more women, with faces that looked like worn leather, were selling necklaces strung with tiny sea shells. All were haenyo. At last, I had found them.

Asking questions via In-gum, I found women, mostly in their fifties and sixties, who had been diving for most of their adult lives. Some might go down as deep as 40 metres, most went to 20 metres. They held their breath for up to three minutes, some for five. All made good money - up to one million wan a month (around pounds 500) - though at a price.

There were up to 10 deaths a year on Cheju alone. Given, therefore, that the number of haenyo has decreased by nearly 75 per cent in the last 30 years, one can assume that in another 30 years the profession will have died out completely. More and more of the younger generation, like In-gum, was getting educated, then going to the mainland. Who wants to be a haenyo?

In-gum was a sorry that I would be leaving Cheju without seeing the haenyo dive. On the island of Udo, for example, a 10-minute ferry ride east of Songsan, with a population of 2,100 and where 400 haenyo lived and worked, they were "all in the field". Three times a year, it seemed the haenyo took a break of 20 days and this looked to be one of them. There were always pluses, however. In the harbour, we found a monument depicting three haenyo wearing goggles and with fishing baskets slung over their shoulders. Perhaps the first line of each of the four verses inscribed on a plaque describes their plight. "We are such poor haenyo ... We get up in the morning and come back late at night ... We get separated from our families ... Wherever we go, people take our seafood ..."

Two days later, I left Cheju on the overnight ferry to Pusan, South Korea's second largest city. In-gum, meanwhile, was helpful to the end. Among the crowds she found me a student studying Chinese at university in Seoul, Ming-cho.

Ming-cho's English seemed confined to "have you seen Titanic?" but she must have got the low-down about the haenyo.

The next morning, we took a taxi to a scruffy beach called Chung-li. There, a woman crouched by the water's edge, her small dark face only visible through a hole in her wetsuit hood. When she saw me, she screamed, grabbed her flippers and plunged into the sea. Not the stuff of dreams, I thought, but at least I had seen the haenyo dive.

Fact File

Getting there

Since British Airways abandoned its flights to Seoul a year ago, the only airline with direct services is Korean Air, with five non-stop flights a week from Heathrow.

For travel before 15 December, the discount agency Quest Worldwide (0181- 547 3322) quotes a fare of pounds 375 on Korean Air, until the end of November; or pounds 301, via Paris, from any of the UK airports served by Air France.

Getting around

Domestic flights are cheap and frequent, and the rail service is good.

More information

The Korean National Tourism Corporation, 20 St George Street, London W1R 9RE (0171-491 1717)