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Paper short abstract

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Ganghwa Island's Civilian Control Zone, this study explores how state security boundaries and infrastructures constrain residents' everyday lives, and examines how the meaning of risk is contested through residents' demands for Civilian Control Line adjustments.

Paper long abstract

This research is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2025 in the northern Ganghwa Island, within South Korea's Civilian Control Zone—commonly called the "border region"—and explores the competing risks of state power and residents' lives centered on security infrastructures. Since the 1953 Armistice Agreement, the state has defined North Korea as an existential risk, deploying surveillance and control infrastructures (fences, checkpoints, cameras, legal regulations) while restricting civilian entry and residence. However, residents experience these infrastructures not as protection but as constraint. State security discourse positions risk externally—beyond the Military Demarcation Line—justifying military infrastructures as risk mitigation mechanisms. In contrast, residents locate risk internally—within the border zone's control mechanisms themselves—and perceive that infrastructures meant to protect them from external threats produce vulnerabilities that threaten their livelihoods. The border region thus constitutes an exceptional space where restricted residence and mobility controls threaten livelihoods. Focusing on residents' demands for Civilian Control Line adjustment and checkpoint removal practices, this research traces how residents challenge state-defined boundaries, negotiate military control in everyday life, and reshape borders. By exploring competing risk logics and their material embodiments, this research illuminates the production of state sovereignty and exceptional spaces under South Korea's division system, and investigates how military infrastructures and residents reinforce and reconfigure boundaries between the logic of protection and the logic of exclusion.