"Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack Chapter 54"
The waves crashed against the volcanic cliffs of Jeju Island, where black lava rocks jutted into the sea and clusters of haenyeo (female divers) in yellow wetsuits emerged from the water, their baskets filled with abalone and seaweed. Su Yao's car wound along coastal roads lined with camellia trees, passing villages with stone walls and thatched-roof houses, until it reached a small harbor where a group of women sat on wooden benches, their hands cleaning and pounding seaweed fibers. Their leader, a 70-year-old haenyeo with a weathered face and a traditional jangot (divers' jacket) draped over her shoulders named Kim San-ok, looked up as they approached, holding a piece of mosi—a fabric woven from seaweed and cotton, soft as linen and dyed in oceanic blues and greens. "You've come for the mosi," she said, her Jeju dialect laced with the rhythm of the tides, gesturing to bolts of the fabric stacked near a drying rack.
The people of Jeju have crafted mosi for over 500 years, a craft born from the island's symbiotic relationship with the sea. Made from gim (laver seaweed) and cotton, mosi was traditionally used by haenyeo as undergarments—its moisture-wicking properties protected them from the cold during long dives, and its breathability kept them cool in summer. The weaving process is deeply tied to the ocean's cycles: seaweed is harvested during the jangma (rainy season) when it's thickest, dried in the sun for exactly three days, and pounded into fibers using wooden mallets carved from pine. Patterns, often subtle waves or shell shapes, are woven to honor the sea spirits, with each stitch said to carry a prayer for safe dives. Su Yao's team had traveled here to merge this maritime craft with their seaweed-metal blend, hoping to create a textile that honored Jeju's haenyeo heritage while adding strength to the delicate seaweed fibers. But from the first conversation, it was clear that their understanding of "ocean connection" and "innovation" was as different as the island's volcanic rock and the deep sea's sand.
Kim San-ok's granddaughter, Lee Mi-yeon, a 28-year-old who balanced diving with running a mosi workshop, held up a mosi scarf with a pattern of tiny shells in iridescent blue. "This is bada kkot (sea flower) design," she said, running her fingers over the fabric that shimmered like sunlight on water. "My grandmother wove it during chuseok (harvest moon) when the sea is calmest. Each shell is made from 10 seaweed threads—too few, and it fades; too many, and it loses its breathability. You don't just make mosi—you converse with the sea."
Su Yao's team had brought industrial fiber extractors and synthetic seaweed blends, intending to mass-produce mosi-inspired fabrics using their seaweed-metal blend for a "coastal luxury" line. When Lin displayed a prototype with machine-woven wave patterns, the women stopped working, their mallets thudding to the ground. Kim San-ok's brother, Park Jong-su, an 80-year-old former haenyeo trainer with a scar across his palm from a shark encounter, stood and spat into the sand. "You think machines can understand the sea's mood?" he said, his voice rough as barnacle-encrusted rock. "Mosi carries the salt of our sweat and the chill of deep dives. Your metal has no salt, no chill—it's a dead thing."
Cultural friction deepened over materials and rituals. Jeju weavers harvest seaweed by hand during dawn dives, offering a cup of sul (rice wine) to the sea before entering the water and thanking each plant as they pluck it. The fibers are cleaned in freshwater streams that flow from Hallasan Mountain, believed to have "purifying energy" that removes excess salt. Dyes are made from sea creatures: sae eunji (sea squirt) for purple, gul (oyster) shells for pearlescent white, and haejuk (seaweed) for green, with each batch dyed during high tide to "absorb the sea's power." The seaweed-metal blend, despite its oceanic origins, was viewed as an insult to the sea spirits. "Your thread comes from faraway seas that don't know our tides," Kim San-ok said, dropping a sample into a bucket of seawater. "It will never protect a diver from the cold."
A practical crisis emerged when the metal threads reacted with the sae eunji dye, turning it a murky gray and causing the seaweed fibers to disintegrate. "It angers Yongwang (dragon king of the sea)," Mi-yeon said, holding up a ruined swatch where the shell patterns had dissolved. "Our mosi grows softer with each wash, like a diver's skin toughening but staying gentle. This crumbles like dried seaweed in wind."
Then disaster struck: industrial pollution from a nearby port leaked into the waters, killing large swathes of seaweed beds and making the remaining gim bitter and brittle. The stored seaweed fibers, kept in clay jars, developed a strange odor, and the haenyeo reported rashes from diving in the contaminated water. With winter approaching and no materials to weave warm mosi undergarments for dives, the community faced both economic and spiritual crisis. Park Jong-su, performing a haenyeo ritual by burning seaweed and reciting prayers to Yongwang, blamed the team for disturbing the ocean's balance. "You brought something foreign to our sea," he chanted, as smoke drifted over the waves. "Now she withholds her gifts."
That night, Su Yao sat with Kim San-ok in her hanok (traditional house), where a ondol (underfloor heating) warmed the room and a pot of haemul jjigae (seafood stew) bubbled on the stove, filling the air with the scent of shrimp and chili. The walls were hung with mosi textiles and diving gear, and a small shrine to Yongwang held a bowl of seawater and a single abalone shell. "I'm sorry," Su Yao said, sipping yuja tea (citron tea). "We came here thinking we could celebrate your craft, but we've only shown we don't understand its soul."
Kim San-ok smiled, passing Su Yao a piece of jeju black pork jerky. "The pollution is not your fault," she said. "Men have always harmed the sea, then begged her forgiveness. My grandmother used to say that the sea gives second chances—like mosi that can be rewoven from broken threads. But your thread—maybe it's a chance to heal, not just make cloth. Young people don't want to dive anymore. We need to show them the sea is worth fighting for."
Su Yao nodded, hope rising like the tide. "What if we start over? We'll help clean the seaweed beds, test the water for toxins, and plant new gim in safer coves. We'll learn to weave mosi by hand, using your mallets and looms. We won't copy your sacred patterns. Instead, we'll create new ones together—designs that merge your shells with our seaweed-metal waves, honoring both your island and the global ocean. And we'll let the haenyeo bless the metal thread with a dive ceremony, so it carries the sea's approval."
Mi-yeon, who had been listening from the doorway, stepped inside, her ttukseom (diving knife) hanging at her waist. "You'd really learn to pound seaweed for hours? Your arms will ache, and the fibers cut like glass at first."
"However long it takes," Su Yao said. "And we'll learn the haenyeo songs you sing underwater. Respect means speaking the sea's language."
Over the next three months, the team immersed themselves in Jeju life. They joined the haenyeo on dawn dives, their lungs burning from holding their breath as they harvested seaweed, and helped install floating barriers to protect new beds from pollution. They trekked to Hallasan's streams with Kim San-ok to collect freshwater for cleaning fibers, learning to offer a pebble to the mountain spirit at each spring. They sat on the harbor benches, pounding seaweed until their arms trembled, as the women sang sori (work songs) about lost divers and bountiful catches. "The seaweed must be pounded with the rhythm of the waves," Kim San-ok said, demonstrating the mallet technique. "Too hard, and it breaks; too soft, and the fibers won't bind. Like diving—you fight the current, but you never forget to flow with it."
They learned to dye fibers in large wooden tubs, their hands stained purple and green as Mi-yeon taught them to add jeju tangerine peel to the sae eunji dye to "sweeten the sea's anger." "You have to stir clockwise during incoming tide," she said, swirling a wooden paddle. "Against the tide, and the color fades like a memory." They practiced the ssangsu weave, which creates a double layer for warmth, their progress slow but steady as Park Jong-su—who couldn't dive anymore but remembered every stitch—corrected their tension with a flick of his walking stick. "The weave must be tight enough to keep out cold, but loose enough to let water escape," he said, prodding a loose thread. "A diver's life depends on such things."
To solve the reaction between the metal threads and sae eunji dye, Lin experimented with coating the metal in a solution of jeju sea salt and camellia oil, a mixture haenyeo use to protect their skin from saltwater. The salt bonded with the metal, preventing discoloration, while the oil added a waterproof layer that Kim San-ok declared "makes it breathe like seaweed." "It's like giving the thread a Jeju soul," she said, showing a swatch where the purple now glowed against the metal's shimmer.
Fiona, inspired by the way Jeju's waters connect to the Pacific, designed a new pattern called dokdo uri (our islands), merging shell motifs with interconnected wave lines in seaweed-metal thread. The shells cluster around tiny island shapes, symbolizing Jeju's relationship with its surrounding seas. "It honors your haenyeo and all who depend on the ocean," she said, and Park Jong-su nodded, running his hand over the design as if feeling the tides in it. "The sea doesn't recognize borders," he said. "This cloth speaks the truth of that."
As the seaweed beds began to recover and the looms hummed with activity, the community held a haenyeo festival, with diving demonstrations, seafood feasts, and a ceremony where they offered their new textiles to the sea. They unveiled their first collaborative piece: a mosi jacket with the dokdo uri pattern, its seaweed fibers strengthened by seaweed-metal thread that caught the light like bioluminescence, and traditional shell borders that seemed to shift color with movement.
Kim San-ok helped Su Yao put on the jacket, her gnarled hands adjusting the ties. "This cloth has two tides," she said, as the haenyeo clapped. "One from our island's coves, one from the great ocean. But both carry the same salt."
As the team's car drove away from Jeju, Mi-yeon ran along the beach, waving a small package. Su Yao rolled down the window, and she tossed it in: a scrap of mosi dyed iridescent blue, stitched with a tiny shell and wave in seaweed-metal, wrapped in a dried seaweed sheet. "To remember us by," read a note in Jeju dialect and Korean. "Remember that the sea is one—like your thread and our gim."
Su Yao clutched the package as the island faded into the distance, its cliffs merging with the horizon. She thought of the hours spent pounding seaweed at dawn, the sori songs sung underwater, the way the metal thread had finally learned to dance with the seaweed. The haenyeo had taught her that tradition isn't about preserving the past—it's about nurturing a relationship with the natural world, one that can adapt to new challenges without breaking its bonds.
Her phone buzzed with a message from the Oromo team: photos of Amina holding their collaborative shamma at a highland festival. Su Yao smiled, typing back: "We've added a new stitch—Jeju tides and your sea, woven as one."
Somewhere in the distance, a haenyeo's horn echoed across the water, a call to dive that now sounded like a promise. Su Yao knew their journey was far from over. There were still countless cultures to learn from, countless threads to weave into the tapestry of their work. And as long as they approached each new place with humility—listening to the sea, honoring those who protect her—the tapestry would only grow more vital, a testament to the beauty of what happens when humanity works with nature, not against her.