Not a pretty island only

The work this reading plan is titled, as they write it, Sumbi, Jacheongbi. Jeju, they say, is an island in the sea south of the Korean Peninsula, with a nature and a way of life of its own. The Jeju they see is a place of hard wind, much stone, poor soil, and people who have had to live close to the sea. The core is not to show the island prettily, but the strength of women who have opened a life in that environment.

Jeju haenyeo, they write, are Jeju women who have made a living by diving for seafood. UNESCO materials on intangible heritage, as this reading cites them, present haenyeo culture as tied to the livelihood and communal life of these women divers. The sea is a beautiful view for tourists; for the haenyeo it is a workplace entered on a held breath. That difference matters to the plan.

Jacheongbi on a volcanic island

Sumbi, Jacheongbi is to be a contemporary remaking of the Seogyeong Bonpuri — the narrative of Jacheongbi as an agrarian deity — from a compendium of Jeju oral literature. Farming on Jeju, they write, does not feel like the broad, level fields of the mainland. It is a volcanic island of basalt and stone fields, hard wind, and water and soil that are not easy. UNESCO world-heritage descriptions, as given in this reading, name Hallasan, Seongsan Ilchulbong, and the Geomunoreum lava-tube system: a nature that is beautiful and, at the same time, not easily tamed for living.

The writer had found Jeju, from a distance, a beautiful and easy island, then walked stone-wall paths and a windy shore and stood near the sea, and thought it was not only a comfortable place to visit. Stone remains in the ground; the water looks clear and is hard to approach. In that sense they join Jacheongbi to the haenyeo. The webtoon’s core identity, as they put it, is the agency and toughness of Jeju women who open a harsh environment. Jacheongbi is not to be left only as a figure in an old myth, but overlaid with the image of present-day Jeju haenyeo.

A scroll that cuts myth against labour

The modern form they choose is a vertical-scroll webtoon, easy for a younger generation to reach, and able to cut a mythic scene against a present one. One panel, they suggest, might show Jacheongbi planting seed in a field of stones; the next, a present-day haenyeo entering a black sea, so that past and present do not fall apart but run as one flow. Assignment guidance, they add, asked that regional elements not stay mere background or material, but form the conflict, the world, and the theme; this work, they say, tries to follow that.

They want to read Sumbi, Jacheongbi as a structure in which Jacheongbi, who works the land, and the haenyeo, who works the sea, throw light on each other. Behind them they would put black stone walls, grass moving in the wind, a dull sky, a breaking sea, and a haenyeo preparing to dive. Jeju’s nature here is not a soft, peaceful backdrop but a raw space: the sea beautiful and dangerous, the stone field hard and slow to allow life. Visitors first picture a blue sea, a café, a travel photograph; this work would show the other side — a tourist’s sea as a view, a haenyeo’s sea as labour; a stone wall as a photo background, and for people of Jeju a mark of poor ground and of living. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. This reading, a student plan for a webtoon, Sumbi, Jacheongbi, from the Seogyeong Bonpuri.

Last updated: 15 November 2026