Demilitarized Zone

8 Key excerpts on "Demilitarized Zone"

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  Militarized Landscapes

  From Gettysburg to Salisbury Plain

  • Chris Pearson, Peter Coates, Tim Cole(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Continuum

    (Publisher)

  After an uneasy five-year peace (1945–50) and a violent three-year war (1950–53), the truce, still in effect today, created a narrow no-man’s–land, roughly along the 38th parallel, where no army is supposed to go. Although called the Demilitarized Zone or DMZ, this thin ribbon of territory is, like the other landscapes discussed in this volume, decidedly militarized. As the American GIs there say, “There ain’t no D in the DMZ.” 2 However, unlike the other landscapes in this volume, the Korean DMZ falls outside the control of any single military or nation. It is not managed according to the competing interests of, say, the American Department of Defense, ranchers and environmentalists, as is some land in Colorado, or the British Ministry of Defence, historical preservationists and naturalists, as is much of Salisbury Plain. 3 Instead, it exists solely because managed competition has proven impossible. Reckless human violence has necessitated the evacuation of all human beings, and the unintended result is a border zone left to other species. 4 Although the consequences of the continued low-grade war may be tragic for human beings, other animals have flourished because of the relative absence of people. Two aspects of this situation fascinate me: the purely accidental nature of M I L I TA R I Z E D L A N D S C A P E S 152 environmental protection in the Korean DMZ, and the diffi culties historians face as they try to represent this accidental quality. At one level, this essay focuses on the DMZ’s biodiversity and geography and on the politics and personalities involved in the negotiation of the zone’s future.

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  Tourism and War

  • Richard Butler, Wantanee Suntikul, Richard Butler, Wantanee Suntikul(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  et al. 2003; Kim 2011). The DMZ serves as a buffer zone to prevent further hostility between the two Koreas. The DMZ is the most heavily militarized area in the world and a closed region. More than a million heavily-armed soldiers, a million land mines, artillery, and barbed wire surround the zone (Healy 2007; Yoon and Park 2010).

  From an ideological perspective, the DMZ is a symbol of the last severe ideological conflict remaining in the world. Some commentators refer to the DMZ as the last Cold War frontier (Escobar 2010), a hot spot of the last remaining Cold War (Efron 2000) or the symbol of the USA’s Cold War (Healy 2007). In other words, the DMZ is a reminder to the world that the Cold War has not technically ended on the Korean peninsula (Ahn 2010).

  From an ecological perspective, the DMZ has become a sanctuary for wildlife because human access has been strictly limited for nearly six decades (Healy 2007; John et al. 2003; Lee and Mjelde 2007; Yoon and Park 2010). The Civilian Control Zone (CCZ), 5–20 km from the DMZ South boundary to the Civilian Control Line (see Figure 10.1 ), has also allowed only limited human access. Consequently, these forbidden zones have preserved natural ecosystems and are a sanctuary for rare species, including 1,597 species of plants, 201 species of birds, 52 species of mammals, and 106 species of fish (Korea National Tourism Organization 2004). Not surprisingly, these unique and distinct characteristics of the DMZ have attracted research attention. Substantial studies about the inaccessible zone of the DMZ have been undertaken (Healy 2007; John et al. 2003; Lee and Mjelde 2007; Yoon and Park 2010). As a consequence, tourism related to the DMZ has been specified as war tourism, peace tourism, ecotourism, and educational research.

  War Related Tourism Around the DMZ and CCZ

  There are several tourist and visitor sites around the DMZ including Panmunjeom, tunnels, observatories, Dorasan station, Imjingak, and Freedom Bridge. These sites provide visitors with the opportunity to experience evidence of the Korean War of the past and the tension or aggression created by the two Koreas in the present. Thus, some of these sites are often referred to as live education sites about war and the outcome of political and ideological conflicts (Yoon and Park 2010). Two sites, Panmunjeom and the tunnels, are considered as the most indicative sites of the Korean War from the past to the present, given their unique characteristics.

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  Making Peace with Nature

  Ecological Encounters along the Korean DMZ

  • Eleana J. Kim(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Duke University Press Books

    (Publisher)

  It is referred to as dmz, dm-Zed, or pimujangjidae (비무장지대), a literal translation of “Demilitarized Zone,” and in place of the mdl (군사분계선; kunsa pun’gyesŏn), Koreans refer to the dividing line as the thirty-eighth parallel (삼팔선; samp’alsŏn) or the Armi- stice Line (휴전선; hyujŏnsŏn). The word “border” is rarely referred to as such. Even the “Border Area,” an administrative designation, is a rough translation of chŏpkyŏng chiyŏk (접경지역), which would be more accurately referred to as “frontier area.” The Korean word chŏpkyŏng emphasizes contiguity over boundary making. In other words, the Border Area is that which is abutting the ccz, and does not refer to the border with the North. All of these lines and areas have shifted over time. The environmental organization, Green Korea United, through field studies and satellite image analysis, determined that the four-kilometer width of the dmz had shrunk by 43 percent in the sixty years between 1953 and 2013, with both ROK and DPRK soldiers mov- ing the barbed wire fencing in toward the mdl (Green Korea United 2013b). 11 INTRODUCTION Areas of the northern ccz are thus actually part of the former dmz, while the ccl has moved northward, making formerly militarily restricted zones part of the civilian Border Area. As I discuss in chapter 2, the zone is there- fore far from being merely the location of an immobile standoff. As more areas are freed from the restriction of the ccz, the area has witnessed in- creasing numbers of economic development projects. Valérie Gelézeau’s assertion that “the persistence, growth and continued emergence of en- claves around the inter-Korean border suggest that the border is anything but static” (2013: 31) continues to ring true. For decades, the conventional wisdom of political scientists, military experts, and policy makers was that the Korean dmz was a success story in that it managed to keep the peace for nearly seventy years.

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  The Korean War and Postmemory Generation

  Contemporary Korean Arts and Films

  • Dong-Yeon Koh(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  2 The rise of DMZ ecotourism and the Real DMZ Project Hayoun Kwon, Youngjoo Cho, Jisun Shin and Minouk Lim DMZ: no-man’s-land In Blind Landscape (2016), Yongbaek Lee, a South Korean installation artist who was invited to represent the Korean Pavilion of the Venice Biennial in 2011, used the image of the Korean peninsula which he downloaded from the South Korean internet portal service. According to the critic Myeongjin Lee, Blind Landscape reflects the current state in which information about the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) is strictly controlled by the government and other superpowers of the technocracy in the name of military security. 1 The rectangular-shaped block placed in the middle part of the Korean peninsula matches with the area of the Demilitarized Zone. The DMZ is 4 km (2.5 miles) wide and reaches up 248 km, including 103 km in Gyeonggi-do and 145 km in Gangwon-do in South Korea over the borderline area, serving as a buffer zone where both sides of South and North Korea maintain a certain distance from each other. It was first established on July 27, 1953 as part of the armistice agreement among the United States (representing the United Nation), North Korea, and then the general of Chinese People’s army. The area of the DMZ remains a mysterious place to most of the South Korean people for the last seven decades after the truce of the Korean War in 1953. More than 70% of the DMZ area is occupied by military facilities-protected zones, so no civilians are allowed to enter the area, except guards protecting the General Out Post (GOP) inside of the DMZ. 2 Even geographical information about the site is strictly prohibited, which artist Yongbaek Lee has criticized. Jongwoo Park, the photographer who happened to have a chance to record the area following shoreline of the Imjin River adjacent to the DMZ in 2009–2010, had a difficult time in locating the path as there is not even a detailed map of the region available to the public

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  UN Peacekeeping in Trouble: Lessons Learned from the Former Yugoslavia

  Peacekeepers' Views on the Limits and Possibilities of the United Nation in a Civil War-Like Conflict

  • Wolfgang Biermann, Martin Vadset(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)
• The agreement shall be an express agreement, may be concluded verbally or in writing, either directly or through a Protecting Power or any impartial humanitarian organization, and may consist of reciprocal and concordant declarations. The agreement may be concluded in peacetime, as well as after the outbreak of hostilities, and should define and describe, as precisely as possible, the limits of the Demilitarized Zone and, if necessary, lay down the methods of supervision.
• The subject of such an agreement shall normally be any zone which fulfils the following conditions:
  • (a) all combatants, as well as mobile weapons and mobile military equipment, must have been evacuated;
  • (b) no hostile use shall be made of fixed military installations or establishments;
  • (c) no acts of hostility shall be committed by the authorities or by the population; and
  • (d) any activity linked to the military effort must have ceased.
    The parties to the conflict shall agree upon the interpretation to be given to the condition laid down in sub-paragraph (d) and upon persons to be admitted to the Demilitarized Zone other than those mentioned in paragraph 4.
• The presence, in this zone, of persons specially protected under the Conventions of this Protocol, and of police forces retained for the sole purpose of maintaining law and order, is not contrary to the conditions laid down in paragraph 3.
• The Party which is in control of such a zone shall mark it, so far as possible, by such signs as may be agreed upon with the other Party, which shall be displayed where they are clearly visible, especially on its perimeter and limits and on highways.
• If the fighting draws near to a Demilitarized Zone, and if the Parties to the conflict have so agreed, none of them may use the zone for purposes related to the conduct of military operations or unilaterally revoke its status.
• If one of the Parties to the conflict commits a material breach of the provisions of paragraph 3 or 6, the other Party shall be released from its obligations under the agreement conferring upon the zone the status of the Demilitarized Zone. In such an eventuality, the zone loses its status but shall continue to enjoy the protection provided by the other provisions of this Protocol and the other rules of international law applicable in armed conflict.