Three minutes a day. One held breath at a time.
SUMBI
It asks what you left behind.
On Jeju Island, off the south coast of Korea, women called haenyeo dive without air tanks. They go down on one held breath, work the bottom, and come up. On the way up they let the held breath out in a whistle — the sumbisori, the sound this game is named after.
SUMBI is a small browser game that imitates one of their days. It is free, there is no account, and nothing is for sale.
What you do
- Pick a badang (a sea) and go down one layer at a time on a single breath.
- Deeper means more. At some layer the breath runs out and everything in your hands is gone.
- Come up whenever you like. What is in the mangsari — the net bag under your float — is yours.
- Five dives a day. That is the whole game.
What it will not do
- No rankings. Haenyeo call a big haul meojeong — the day's luck, not skill. Ranking luck would be calling it skill.
- Nothing for sale. No payments, no paid retries, no rewarded ads.
- No safety hints. Nothing here tells you the next layers are safe. No card, no sound, no animation. You are told how deep you are, and that is all.
- The shallow water gives you nothing. Halmang Badang is kept empty for the oldest divers. You can go in. You come out empty-handed.
Do not try this in real water. The breath in this game lives on the screen. Holding your breath underwater can cause loss of consciousness from lack of oxygen, and it can happen at any depth. Never hyperventilate before going under, and never swim alone.
Royal Life Saving Society – Australia, Hypoxic Blackout. The full notice is on the notice page.
Where the words come from
Jeju has its own words for this work, and this game keeps them: tewak, mangsari, bitchang, bulteok, badang. They are explained on the haenyeo words page. What the sea actually gives, and in which month, is on what the sea gives.
Everything here was read out of public sources, listed on the sources page. I am not a haenyeo and I do not live on Jeju. If something is wrong, tell me and I will fix it and say what I fixed.
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