Mi-yang, who is in her forties, came with her fellow artisan, belonging to a fast disappearing art and profession, to Sharjah translating the motto 'Connection' with the peoples of the world participating in 'Sharjah Heritage Days’.
Mi-yang represents a culture and popular heritage of making hats for the upper classes. Her art is now limited to three women in all of South Korea due to the high skills and dedication required for the process of weaving hats. With incredible precision and patience, it takes these artists six to eight months to complete a single hat.
As Mi-yang sits in front of a circular wooden table on top of a bamboo base, she carefully gazes from behind her glasses at the precision of her fingertips weaving the shiny horse hair between the joints of the mould designed for making hats, out of three wooden moulds dedicated to her rare profession.
18 years of dedication, hard work
Mi-yang, who has been practising her profession for more than 18 years after inheriting it from her ancestors, tells the story of noble hats, whose price sometimes reaches 2.1 won million in South Korean currency, equivalent to AED 54000 dirhams. The priciest of these hats is designated for the king with three layers, while the two-layer hat is for the governor and the one-layer hat is reserved for nobles and upper classes.
A rare heirloom
The pavilion representing Jeju Province of South Korea, which is the official guest of honor at the 21st session of Sharjah Heritage Days, reflects the rich and diverse cultural heritage that this province possesses. It has been a distinct addition to the Sharjah Heritage Days festival.
Dr Abdul Aziz Al Musallam, Chairman of the Sharjah Institute for Heritage, stresses the importance of Jeju Province’s participation in showcasing its culture and rare folk heritage, pointing out the depth of relations and ties between the United Arab Emirates, represented by Sharjah, and South Korea, represented by Jeju Province, through these enriching encounters and visits.
Dr Al Musallam pointed out that Sharjah was the guest of honor at the Seoul International Book Fair held in 2023, which offered an ideal platform and opportunity to introduce the Emirati heritage and the richness and diversity that it abounds in.
He stressed that the Sharjah Heritage Days sought to host Jeju Province due to its ancient cultural heritage, especially with regard to traditional professions and crafts such as the profession of deep sea diving which is practiced by Haenyeo women in Korea, just as men practiced pearl diving in the UAE.
Sea warriors
On the opposite side of the Korean pavilion, a seventy-year-old Haenyeo woman receives the audience, with her language (Jeju) and her smile that has not been changed by her age to maintain the vitality that the diving profession has given her. She explains, with diving movements and the whistle that she exhales when she finishes her task of bringing food from the depth of sea.
Haenyeo (Korean: sea women) are female divers in the South Korean province of Jeju, whose livelihood consists of harvesting a variety of mollusks, seaweed, and other sea life. They dive into deep sea without any gear or equipment, relying on their skill and ability to survive underwater.
These women practice the diving profession, which remains monopolised by women in the Jeju Province, due to the scarcity of agricultural land.
Like other Jeju women, she learned the profession from the age of 7 to 8 years, and dives to a depth of up to 40 meters without diving equipment, and without the help of oxygen cylinders, to extract the best food, from shellfish, snails, algae, and others.
UNESCO included the Jeju Province in the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2016, as a cultural heritage worthy of preservation.
The only one in the world
Jeju Island is distinguished by the fact that it is almost the only one in the world that currently lives in the heart of its popular heritage, after stopping the advance of development and insisting on practicing the same professions and using the same machines and tools that their ancestors used hundreds of years ago.
The South Korean pavilion at Sharjah Heritage Days conveys the details of daily life in the Jeju Province, and introduces visitors to the wooden boxes designated for storing various collectibles, clothes, hats, food baskets, and pottery vessels of various sizes.
The Hanyeo people on Jeju Island live a simple life, as they continue the approach of their ancestors by taking care of their needs by themselves, such as building houses, children's beds, hats, clothes, pottery and other living necessities.
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