Related Posts
Video: Korea’s DMZ – An unlikely wildlife refuge
'Tell me, is there another jungle beyond the forbidden zone?' queries Charlton Heston in the classic Cold War...
Cold War cats: Could ‘extinct’ Korean tigers be hiding in the DMZ?
Demilitarized Zone is sometimes referred to as Korea's 'accidental paradise'; a 155-mile (249 km) long buffer zone between...
Goldfish to serve as water purity indicators at South Korea’s G20 summit
I can’t really believe it, but South Korea is going to use goldfish to make sure toilet water...
Whale-watching vs. whale-whacking
minke whale, photo: Blake Maybank (Flickr CC)
It's been a bad week for whales.
First, a proposal to create...
Does Unexpected Cold Weather Mean There is no Global Warming?
Places around the world have been hit with a lot of unexpected cold weather this year, including parts...
Tip of the Day
Keep eggs out of the fridge to save energy when cooking them
Korea’s DMZ: Cold war greenery
photo by Christopher John SSF (Friar's Balsam on Flickr CC)
The demilitarized zone that makes up the borderlands dividing North and South Korea is an unlikely (and unintentional) wildlife reserve.
The DMZ is home to many species that are extinct on the remainder of the Korean peninsula. Full of landmines and guarded by armed soldiers from both the north and south, the area is obviously unwelcoming to human visitors. But this has allowed the forest to grow and wildlife to thrive for nearly 70 years.
The rest of Korea is a different story: international competition over the country’s resources and a 40-year Japanese occupation stripped and devastated the peninsula. What came next was no better:
Since at least the 1940s, deforestation for fuel wood and clearing for agricultural land has caused significant erosion of the area’s mountains and hills and contributed to the siltation of its rivers, streams and lakes. The 1950 to 1953 war ranged across the entire peninsula, subjecting it to widespread devastation that destroyed cities, roads, forests and even mountains. And, in the 1960s and 1970s, unchecked industrialisation further undermined the peninsula’s ecological health, causing air, water, and soil pollution.
–China Dialogue
Rare cranes and other birds, abundant fish, mammals including Asiatic black bears, musk deer, spotted seals and perhaps even ‘extinct’ Korean tigers roam the Korean DMZ. This information is speculative, however, since the DMZ is basically off limits.
Some official conservation efforts in the DMZ have borne fruit, but its future is uncertain. For instance, what a reunification would bring for the zone is a concern of environmentalists on both sides of the border.
For more on the story check out the following piece from China Dialogue called “Korea’s green ribbon of hope” by Lisa Brady.
6 Comments
You can also log in to post a comment.
Other Greenfudge.org posts
Small Australian Town Goes Bottled-Water Free
Today, the small Australian town of Bundanoon intends to go bottled-water free, as tapped water becomes the latest craze. Earlier this year, the town held a vote in favor of supporting events and businesses, in exchange for removing commercial bottled water from sale. Because such a small town (with a population of around 2,500) was going to take on such a huge industry, they received media coverage and praise from around the globe. And they certainly were not alone in their...
Breaking: Gaddafi may sabotage oil pipelines to Mediterranean
Time Magazine has cited a source close to Colonel Gaddafi’s regime in Libya claiming that the North African dictator may sabotage oilfields and pipelines to the Mediterranean Sea. In the first Gulf War of 1991, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein ordered engineers to burn oil fields and blow up wells in Kuwait, burning one billion barrels of crude and creating an ecological catastrophe which killed vegetation and wildlife, polluted groundwater and poisoned the local human population. Besides cutting oil supplies to Europe, if...
Wind turbines spoil views of rising seas and toxic sunsets
Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts are established playgrounds of wealthy, liberal New Englanders like the Kennedy family. This stronghold America’s political left – generally known for being socially as well as environmentally progressive – also spawned Save Our Sound, a group that vehemently opposes wind farming in the local Nantucket Sound. Cape Wind is a proposed project to build offshore wind turbines in the Sound. It will be one of the first offshore wind power projects in the United...
The New York Times presents: Climate Change Conversations
On the electronic version of The New York Times, readers can participate in conversations and debate about a variety of subjects relating to the environment and climate change. To post you have to have an account and log in, but an account with the Times is not necessary if you'd just like to read. Climate Change Conversations is interactive and can be visited here on The New York Times website. All or some topics can also be embedded on your own...
Canadian river sees millions of salmon disappear
A river on Canada’s Pacific Coast, once known for it’s most fertile spawning ground for sockeye, has seen millions of sockeye salmon disappear mysteriously. This summer, no less than 10.6 million bright-red sockeye salmon were expected to return to spawn on the Fraser River. The latest estimates however say fewer than 1 million have returned. Read the full article here...
2,000 attend banned concert for Russian forest preservation
Environmental activists have been fighting to save Russia’s Khimki forest from plans to build a federal highway through it. On Sunday a rock concert in protest of the highway plans was held in Moscow, attracting some 2,000 people. Police prevented sound equipment from entering the concert area, but well-known Russian rock singer and political critic Yuri Shevchuk performed songs without amplification. From an AFP article: While the demonstration on Pushkin Square against the construction of the road had been sanctioned by the Moscow...
Naomi Klein on Gulf oil disaster: Neither BP nor the US government can ‘make it right’
Writer and activist Naomi Klein describes in a piece for the Guardian how an overconfident BP recklessly endangered the environment and human culture of the Gulf of Mexico, believing there to be 'little risk' of disaster. Even if a spill will to occur, BP believed, it would be minor and easily manageable. Now that a real – and plainly unmanageable – disaster has actually happened, promises from BP boss Tony Hayward and US President Barack Obama that the Gulf will fully...
Europe and the U.S. join hands to raise awareness about antibiotic resistance
Yesterday (November 18th, 2010) marked the start of this years European Antibiotics Awareness day. On the same day the United States’ CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) launched the Get Smart About Antibiotics Week. This years campaign wants to promote the prudent use of antibiotics and the problem of increasing antibiotic resistance. Marc Sprenger, Director of ECDC (European Center for Disease Control), launched the one-week campaign yesterday by addressing the members of the European Parliament: Antibiotic resistance remains a serious threat...
Chimpanzees Show No Fear When Dealing With Wildfires
Chimpanzees are recognized as close primate cousins of humans. Recent findings—published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology—show that these loveable primates may have developed another human-like trait: the ability to predict wildfire movement and how to react accordingly. Jill Pruetz, a primatologist of Iowa State University, believes this development may help scientists gain better understanding of our primitive ancestors and how or when they first learned to control fire. Puertz was spending time in Senegal in 2006, observing savanna chimpanzees...
Bullfighting vs. fire bull tradition exposes political hypocrisy in Spain
The parliament of Catalonia voted to ban bullfighting in July, a move that enraged Spain’s bullfighting community and drew accusations of Catalan nationalist motivations rather than concern for animal welfare. Well, plainly both nationalism and animal welfare played their parts in the ban – apparent by the fact that groups from both camps participated in the anti bullfighting campaign. But on the different, yet similar issue of fire bulls in Catalonia, the groups are more split. In the Catalan town of Amposta, bulls...
View all articles
[...] how war can sometimes preserve an environment. Like the DMZ in Korea, conflict has (at least to some extent) prevented environmental degradation in Kashmir. Now the [...]
[...] Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) has an unlikely wildlife refuge, and is home to rare cranes, many fish and mammals such as Asiatic black bears, musk deer, spotted [...]
I think it’s a village that is meant to look good from the border. According to N. Korea it is a farming village, but the South suspects it just houses soldiers. As with all these things, who really knows but those who live there?
why is it called ” fake” village? coz Chinese are the dwellers not Koreans? hahahahaahahaahhhhaahh sorry bad joke, seriously why is it called Fake?
There is a “fake” village on the North side (Peace Village), but much of N. Korea is mysterious. The zone itself is 4km wide and spans the entire border. It’s got land mines too, but I don’t know if animals ever set them off. Of course US soldiers (still there since 1953!) are stationed on the South side as well as S. Koreans.
This is nice coz I’m quite curious what makes up the borderlands between the NOKOR and SOKOR coz I’ve once watched this document story about the Nokor 2 years ago done by a well known journalist here and It was shown that along those walls there’s also a land mass…