"Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack Chapter 72"
The morning sun glinted off the turquoise waters of Jeju Island, where volcanic cliffs plunged into the sea and haenyo (female divers) emerged from the waves with baskets of abalone balanced on their heads. Su Yao's car wound along coastal roads lined with camellia trees, passing women in indigo jeogori (blouses) mending nets outside stone houses, until it reached a village nestled between Hallasan Mountain and the Pacific Ocean. In a workshop with a thatched roof and views of the sea, a group of weavers sat on low stools, their hands moving with rhythmic precision as they processed kelp fibers and wove them into coarse, durable fabric. Their leader, a 68-year-old haenyeo with weathered hands and a silver hairpin shaped like a sea turtle named Kim San-ok, looked up as they approached, holding a finished piece of haenyo cloth—a textured fabric in deep greens and browns, stiff yet surprisingly flexible. "You've come for the haebok," she said, her Jeju dialect lilting like waves, gesturing to bolts of cloth stacked beside baskets of dried seaweed.
The haenyeo community of Jeju has crafted seaweed cloth for over 400 years, a craft born from their unique relationship with the ocean. The haebok—a fabric made from kelp and seaweed fibers—serves as both workwear and spiritual armor: it protects divers from sharp rocks, insulates them in cold waters, and is embroidered with symbols to honor Yongwang (the sea god) and Jacheongbi (the goddess of Jeju). Each piece requires up to three months of work, with weavers following the tidal calendar to harvest seaweed during low spring tides for "strongest fibers." The process involves over 15 steps, from sun-drying kelp to hand-weaving, with each stage accompanied by sori (work songs) that coordinate diving teams and pray for safe returns. Dyes are made from marine plants and minerals: green laver for emerald, sargassum for amber, and volcanic ash for charcoal gray, with recipes guarded by elder haenyeo through oral tradition. Su Yao's team had traveled here to merge this maritime craft with their seaweed-metal blend, hoping to create a textile that honored haenyeo traditions while adding durability to the natural fibers. But from the first conversation, it was clear that their understanding of "ocean gratitude" and "innovation" was as different as the volcanic island and the industrial mainland.
San-ok's granddaughter, Park Mi-yeon, a 28-year-old who documented haenyeo culture while studying marine biology, held up a haebok jacket embroidered with sea turtles and waves. "This is for the Danoje (spring festival)," she said, tracing the motifs that represent the ocean's bounty. "My grandmother harvested the kelp during Chuseok (harvest moon) when the sea is generous—too many turtle patterns, and it brings storms; too few, and the catches fail. You don't just make haebok—you weave the ocean's favors into fiber."
Su Yao's team had brought mechanical fiber extractors and synthetic dye blends, intending to mass-produce simplified haebok patterns using their seaweed-metal blend for a "Jeju coastal" lifestyle line. When Lin displayed a prototype with machine-woven wave motifs, the women froze, their wooden mallets thudding against the stone worktable. San-ok's elder sister, Kim San-bok, an 82-year-old haenyeo with a missing finger from a shark encounter, stood and smacked her palm against the fabric. "You think machines can capture the ssi (spirit) of the sea?" she said, her voice rough as barnacle-encrusted rock. "Haebok carries the blood of divers and the salt of their tears. Your metal has no blood, no tears—it's a ship's anchor, not a diver's friend."
Cultural friction deepened over materials and rituals. Haenyeo weavers offer the first harvest of kelp to Yongwang, floating it on a bamboo raft with rice cakes and a cup of soju to "thank the sea for its gifts." The seaweed is boiled in seawater collected during high tide, where women sing morae sori (rowing songs) to "soften the fibers like the moon softens the tides." Looms are made from camellia wood, which resists saltwater damage, and weavers tie small weights to the warp threads—usually seashells or polished volcanic stones—to "keep the cloth grounded like a diver's weights." The seaweed-metal blend, despite its marine origins, was viewed as an intrusion. "Your thread comes from deep seas where our grandmothers never dove," San-ok said, placing the sample on a mat woven from pandanus leaves. "It will never know the rhythm of our tides."
A practical crisis emerged when the metal threads reacted with the saltwater processing, developing a greenish corrosion and causing the seaweed fibers to weaken. "It angers Yongwang," Mi-yeon said, holding up a ruined swatch where the turtle pattern had frayed. "Our haebok grows stronger with each dive, like a shell polished by waves. This will dissolve like rotting kelp, breaking the ocean's trust."
Then disaster struck: industrial pollution from a nearby cargo ship spill contaminated the coastal waters, killing the kelp beds and making diving dangerous. The stored seaweed fibers, kept in a ceramic jar, absorbed toxic chemicals, and the weavers' wooden looms—some carved from driftwood collected by great-grandmothers—were damaged when a storm surge flooded the workshop. With the Haenyeo Festival approaching, when new haebok are blessed before the diving season, the community faced an ecological and cultural crisis. San-ok, performing a ritual at the village sea shrine by burning dried kelp and reciting prayers, blamed the team for disturbing the ocean's balance. "You bring metal from factories to our clean sea," she chanted, as smoke curled toward the waves. "Now Yongwang is angry, and he takes back his seaweed."
That night, Su Yao sat with San-ok in her hanok (traditional house), where a clay pot of haemul jjigae (seafood stew) bubbled over a ondol (underfloor heating) fire, filling the air with the scent of shrimp and gochujang. The walls were hung with haebok jackets and black-and-white photos of haenyeo divers from the 1950s, and a small shrine held a seashell altar with offerings of dried seaweed. "I'm sorry," Su Yao said, sipping makgeolli (rice wine) from a earthenware cup. "We came here thinking we could honor your craft, but we've only shown we don't understand its soul."
San-ok smiled, passing Su Yao a piece of hongeo-hoe (fermented skate) wrapped in lettuce. "The pollution is not your fault," she said. "The mainland has been stealing the sea's health for years. My grandmother used to say that even poisoned waters can be healed, like a cut diver's hand. But your thread—maybe it's a chance to show that haebok can protect the sea now, not just us. Young people don't want to dive anymore. We need to show them the ocean is worth fighting for."
Su Yao nodded, hope rising like the tide. "What if we start over? We'll help clean the kelp beds with your diving techniques, plant pollution-resistant seaweed varieties, and filter the stored fibers. We'll learn to make haebok by hand, using your sori songs. We won't copy your sacred symbols. Instead, we'll create new ones together—designs that merge your sea turtles with our ocean currents, honoring both your island and the global sea. And we'll let San-bok bless the metal thread with a diver's oath, so it carries Yongwang's favor."
Mi-yeon, who had been listening from the kitchen, stepped into the room, her rubber diving boots squeaking on the floor. "You'd really learn to dive for kelp in winter? The water's 10 degrees—your lungs will burn, your fingers will freeze to the seaweed."
"However long it takes," Su Yao said. "And we'll learn the morae sori you sing to coordinate diving teams. Respect means working alongside you."
Over the next four months, the team immersed themselves in haenyeo life. They helped build floating barriers to contain the pollution, their hands stung by chemicals, and trained with San-ok to dive for seaweed—learning to hold their breath for two minutes, to read currents, and to recognize healthy kelp by its iridescent sheen. They sat on stools in the workshop, pounding kelp fibers with wooden mallets until their arms ached, as the women sang sori songs that counted catches and warned of rocks. "Each fiber must be beaten until it's as strong as a diver's resolve," San-ok said, demonstrating the rhythmic pounding. "Too gentle, and it breaks in the water; too harsh, and it loses flexibility. Like diving—you need strength and grace."
They learned to dye fibers in earthenware pots over wood fires, their clothes stained green and gray as Mi-yeon taught them to add volcanic ash to the sargassum dye to "make the color last like Jeju's rocks." "You have to collect ash after a rainstorm," she said, sifting it through a bamboo sieve. "It holds the mountain's protection—dry ash brings only brittleness." They practiced the plain weave that makes haebok so durable, their progress slow but steady as San-bok, who had 50 years of diving experience, corrected their tension with a sharp eye. "The weave must be tight enough to block cold water," she said, her gnarled fingers adjusting a thread, "but loose enough to let your skin breathe. Like a diver's courage—firm but not rigid."
To solve the reaction between the metal threads and saltwater, Lin experimented with coating the metal in a solution of seasnail mucus and camellia oil, a mixture haenyeo use to waterproof their goggles. The mucus sealed the metal, preventing corrosion, while the oil let it flex with seaweed fibers—a combination San-ok declared "moves like a diver in the waves." "It's like giving the thread a haenyeo soul," she said, showing a swatch where the green now shimmered against the metal's subtle glow.
Fiona, inspired by Jeju's underwater volcanic vents, designed a new pattern called "Fire and Tide," merging sea turtle motifs with wave patterns in seaweed-metal thread. The turtles' shells gradually transform into volcanic rock formations, symbolizing how Jeju's land and sea are intertwined. "It honors your divers and our ocean guardians," she said, and San-bok nodded, pressing the fabric to her cheek like a diver checking water temperature. "The best divers respect both fire and water," she said. "This cloth understands their power."
As the kelp beds began to recover and the workshop was rebuilt on higher ground, the community held a Haenyeo Festival with traditional dances and diving demonstrations. They unveiled their first collaborative haebok at the sea shrine, where it hung between two torches catching the light of the full moon. The fabric featured the "Fire and Tide" pattern, its seaweed fibers strengthened by seaweed-metal thread that glowed like bioluminescent plankton, and traditional wave borders that seemed to undulate like the ocean's surface.
San-ok helped Su Yao put on the haebok jacket, tying the sash with a knot used to secure diving baskets. "This cloth has two hearts," she said, as the haenyeo sang their blessing song. "One from our Jeju, one from your sea. But both beat for the ocean's health."
As the team's car drove away from the village, Mi-yeon ran alongside the coast, waving a small package. Su Yao rolled down the window, and she tossed it in: a scrap of seaweed cloth dyed emerald, stitched with a tiny turtle and wave in seaweed-metal, wrapped in dried kelp. "To remember us by," read a note in Jeju dialect and Korean. "Remember that all seas are connected—like your thread and our seaweed."
Su Yao clutched the package as Jeju's coastline faded into the distance, the sunset painting the waves in hues of orange and purple. She thought of the hours spent pounding kelp by the shore, the sori songs that seemed to rise from the ocean itself, the way the metal thread had finally learned to move with the seaweed fibers. The haenyeo had taught her that tradition isn't about preserving the past—it's about nurturing a living relationship with the ocean, letting old practices evolve while keeping their sacred promise to protect the sea.
Her phone buzzed with a message from the Moroccan team: photos of Leila holding their collaborative zellige at a desert festival. Su Yao smiled, typing back: "We've added a new sea turtle—Jeju waters and your sea, woven as one."
Somewhere in the distance, the haenyeo's work songs echoed across the water, a reminder of the music that connects all who depend on the ocean. Su Yao knew their journey was far from over. There were still countless coasts to honor, countless ocean stories to weave into the tapestry of their work. And as long as they approached each new place with humility—listening to the waves, honoring those who protect them—the tapestry would only grow more harmonious, a testament to the beauty of all things bound by the sea.