Cheorwon DMZ, The Nature in the Anthropocene

Korea’s demilitarized zone (DMZ) offers an illustrative example of the Anthropocene. The area has been shaped by a series of Anthropocenic events including Japanese colonialism, the Korean War, and the state-led capitalist development. The secluded DMZ area shows accidental restoration of nature in the devoid of humans. However, the surrounding areas bears problems of the Anthropocene related to the Cold War politics, capitalism, and ecological crisis.

Korea’s joy of being freed from Japanese colonial rule was brief. In 1945, the Korean Peninsula was divided into two parts at a latitude of 38˚ N. Cheorwon, which lies above this line, became part of the DPRK, which soon after established a Communist government, formed the Peoples’ Committee of North Korea, and constructed the headquarters for the Workers’ Party.

Much of Cheorwon-eup, which was reclaimed during the Japanese colonial period but later destroyed during the Korean War, was transformed into farmland starting in the 1960s. Farmers turned the fields, ruined by war, into arable land. They sometimes had to remove landmines from the soil by hand. Much like the farmers during the colonial period, farmers arrived from all over the country after the Korean War to farm the land. 

The plains of Cheorwon were restored from the wasteland of the war to rich rice fields. Cheorwon became a successful example of industrial agriculture in Korea through a tri-partite effort of state-led agricultural development, agricultural machines, and agri-technologies. 

Beginning in the mid-1990s, the Cheorwon plain began to receive a special visitor–the cranes. Cranes come from Siberia to Cheorwon to spend the winter. They are drawn to the DMZ because of the abundant food resources in the farmlands of the CCZ, and the safe resting places provided by its wetlands inside of the DMZ. In the last three decades, the number of red-crowned cranes and white-naped cranes wintering in and around the Cheorwon DMZ has grown.

After the harvest, local farmers chop up their rice straws and put them back into the rice fields. This action secures and provides the cranes with enough grains to feed on. Some farmers even flood their rice paddies to provide the cranes with roosting places. Putting back the rice straws and flooding the rice fields may look trivial but very effective ways of supporting biodiversity of the wetland system of rice paddies for the cranes and other species.

The endangered crane birds cannot survive without Cheorwon’s rice paddies. So do the farmers. However, the economic value of rice farming has massively dropped. In this difficult time, the visit of the cranes highlights the conservationist value of rice paddies. Once a “rice factory”, Cheorwon’s rice field now nurtures people, the cranes, and other lifeforms.