Paper short abstract:

By tracing the geo-history of Cherwon, a town divided by the Korean War, this paper aims to show that the conservation of what is called “the ecological paradise” of the DMZ is not a simple matter of keeping the status quo or going back to the past but has multiple temporalities.

Paper long abstract:

The Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) on the Korean peninsula offers a window into the Anthropocene future, a place where humans have suddenly vanished. Yet the DMZ is a least likely place to find such conventional evidence for the Anthropocene as radioactive materials, plastics, and chicken bones. This is the place where past human conflicts – colonial occupations, the Korean War, and unfinished Cold War tensions – have created a peaceful condition for non-humans. More than 5,000 species of plants and animals on the ground live with millions of land mines underground, whereas humans watch over, patrol, and environ this space of natureculture from a far. This paper explores the meaning of conservation from the perspective of multiple temporalities of conservation. By tracing the geo-history of Cherwon – a town that was developed as a rice farming place during the Japanese colonial period, served as a strategic front for the North Korean government before the Korean War, thoroughly destroyed and divided during the war, redeveloped by settlers coming from around South Korea, and recently inhabited by endangered species like cranes – this paper aims to show that the conservation of what is called “the ecological paradise” of the DMZ is not a simple matter of keeping the status quo or going back to the past. Our main argument is that multiple ideas of conservation co-exist, transposed from the past and also transposed into the future, where nonhumans can claim surprisingly a high ground in the politics of affect.