South Korea – The Jeju Institute of Korean Medicine and Cheil have co-developed a safety system rooted in the traditional community culture of Jeju’s “haenyeo”, the women free-divers of South Korea’s Jeju province.
Recognised as one of the world’s only female-led fishing cultures, the haenyeo were inscribed on UNESCO’s List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2016. The divers descend up to 20 metres dozens of times a day to harvest seafood, relying on breath-hold diving without modern equipment.
The system takes the form of a mobile application called “Haenyeo Safe Buddy“, which applies technology to modernise “sunooreum”, the haenyeo’s long-standing cooperative safety practice of watching over one another while diving.
Its development comes amid growing safety concerns as the haenyeo population declines and ages. While the number of active divers has fallen, accidents have increased, with cardiac arrest accounting for 35% of reported incidents. More than 70% of these cases involve drivers aged 70 and above.
The app uses smartwatch data to monitor divers’ heart rates in real time and analyse changes that may indicate health risks. When abnormal signals are detected, alerts are automatically sent to the affected diver and other haenyeo within a one-kilometre radius, allowing nearby divers to initiate immediate rescue efforts.
Traditionally, sunooreum relied on close physical proximity between divers. However, as numbers have dwindled, greater distances between individuals have weakened this informal safety net. The app is designed to address this gap by enabling coordinated responses despite wider dispersal at sea.
In other emergency situations, a manual alert function allows users to notify the fishing village association and Jeju’s emergency response centre, supporting faster and more structured intervention.
Launched in March, the Haenyeo Safe Buddy app is currently used by around 300 haenyeo. According to the developers, no fatalities have been reported among participating divers over the past ten months.
Speaking on this project, Hee-chul Ko, R&D team leader of the Jeju Institute of Korean Medicine, said, “The Haenyeo Safe Buddy app is where modern technology meets the spirit of traditional diving to enable swift and effective rescue when women divers face danger. We hope this new solution will help preserve the tradition of our cultural heritage and contribute to their safety for generations to come.”
