the Jamnyo (Haenyo) ("women of the sea") of Jeju Island in Korea

Tuesday 2 October 2018 to 15h
Auditorium of the Cernuschi Museum. 7 avenue Velazquez - 75008 Paris

The Society of Friends of the Cernuschi Museum and the Cultural Foundation Barbier-Mueller Museum
ask you to attend a meeting with Madam Ok-kyung Pak, Doctor of Anthropology, Research Associate, Center for East Asian Studies, University of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on

the Jamnyo (Haenyeo) ("Women of the sea") from Jeju Island in Korea, confers

At the extreme southwestern tip of the Korean peninsula is Jeju Island, little known to the outside world. It abounds in shamanic myths and epics, since there are 18 000 deities and 346 sanctuaries, of which 68% are devoted to goddesses. When one knows the harshness of women's lives in Jeju, one can better understand why the island has so many myths and goddesses. (......)
The symbolic representation of these women of Jeju is the "woman of the sea" or the "diver" (Jamnyo), because they dive into the sea every day without knowing if they will come out alive. They are said to travel between "this land" and "this land" (the land of death).

For the memory of cultures at risk, the Barbier-Mueller Cultural Museum Foundation under the auspices of a Scientific Committee supports financially and frames ethnological surveys carried out by experienced anthropologists or young PhD students with unknown peoples. It ensures the publication of these studies in the form of monographs and the organization of conferences on the subjects treated.