Description

The Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) is the world’s most heavily militarized border and is often described in terrestrial terms as a no-man’s land. Uninhabited for sixty years since the end of the Korean War, the DMZ has long represented for South Koreans the trauma of the national division. In recent years, however, as evidence of the zone’s biodiversity has drawn the interest of scientists, environmentalists, state bureaucrats, the DMZ is now increasingly associated with narratives of nature’s resilience and symbols of peace and life. One of the species that plays a central role in these narratives is the critically endangered Red-crowned Crane, which flies from the Amur region of Russia annually to winter in the DMZ area. Their declining numbers are a source of concern for ornithologists, bird lovers, and international conservation organizations, as well as the South Korean and North Korean states. Another highly endangered, yet less celebrated, species is the Black-faced Spoonbill, that breeds in the islands within the contested waters of the Northern Limit Line. This paper examines the DMZ’s skies as ecological, political, and military passageways, focusing on the flyways of migratory birds that are framed as transcending the national division and geopolitical antagonisms. Focusing on avian flyways, which define the migration spaces of bird species, this paper asks what alternative cartographies and interspecial poetics might be possible for rethinking the contemporary convergence of global security and environmental preservation.

Eleana Kim is a cultural anthropologist who research areas include kinship, personhood, nationalism, political ecology, and environment. She is the author of Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging (Duke University Press, 2010) and her work on transnational adoption has appeared in journals such as Social Text, Anthropological Quarterly and the Journal of Korean Studies. Her current project, Making Peace with Nature: The Greening of the Korean Demilitarized Zone examines the Korean DMZ as a site of political, ecological, and social change and contestation in the context of the national division, global climate change, and mass extinction. Her research has been supported by the Fulbright Commission, the Social Science Research Council, the Korea Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies.