Joie de vivre at Jeju Island

This month, we travel with Meghan to a beautiful island in South Korea, to see how the women have broken the mould to become the breadwinners of their families.

What if I tell you that you have to wear an old-fashioned headlight-shaped scuba mask and dive 10 metres into a freezing cold sea, without any modern diving equipment, to catch shellfish and seaweeds from the ocean floor with your bare hands?

Nature's glory

Welcome to Jeju Island! The magic of this place begins the moment the airplane swerves to land on this emerald-green island, surrounded by mesmerising icy cool, blue waters. Created by an underwater volcanic eruption some two million years ago, one look at the island and your heart will skip a beat.

Jeju-do, also known as Jeju Island, is one of the two self-governing provinces in South Korea, run by local natives. Populated by humans since the early Neolithic period, the Jeju people are indigenous to the island, and the Jeju language is considered critically endangered by UNESCO.