hankyoreh

Choe Jae-chun, distinguished professor at Ewha Womans University, speaks to the Hankyoreh. (Park Kyung-man/The Hankyoreh)

“The value of the DMZ is perceived as much bigger abroad than in Korea. Its value as an important habitat for endangered species and a natural ecosystem that has been untouched by human activity for 70 years is incomparable to anywhere else.”

These are the words of Choe Jae-chun, the nation’s leading ecologist, a distinguished professor at Ewha Womans University, and the founding president of the National Institute of Ecology. Choe made the remarks during a talk with Gyeonggi Province Governor Kim Dong-yeon at the 2022 “Let’s DMZ Forum” hosted by Gyeonggi Province on Sept. 16.

That day, the Hankyoreh sat down with Choe, who was co-chairing the organizing committee for the forum, at KINTEX in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province.

“The DMZ is now part of the entire human race. If we have not properly preserved the DMZ when our country is unified someday, the world will not recognize us as an advanced country,” Choe said.

Choe first declared that the DMZ was no longer Korean land when he was invited to be chair at the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2016 while he was president at the National Institute of Ecology.

“I was speaking in jest, but at the time I kind of ended up selling out my country,” Choe said.

“Just imagine it. Let’s say that one day the government of Tanzania announced that it would develop the Serengeti National Park into an apartment complex. How would the world respond? People from all over the world would probably take a stand and say, ‘It may be your country, but you can’t do this.’ There would be a huge uproar. I believe the DMZ has almost reached this same level [of ecological value],” Choe continued.

“If we destroy the DMZ and develop that area, the status of Korea will completely collapse,” Choe said, adding that “preserving the DMZ is linked to the issue of South Korea's national status.”

Choe’s relationship with the DMZ came about thanks to the influence of Edward Wilson, a professor at Harvard University who was Choe’s thesis advisor while he was studying in the US in the mid-1980s.

“Professor Wilson, who passed away last winter, was very interested and curious about the DMZ. Every time we would meet, he would ask me, ‘How is the DMZ?’ He used to tell me, ‘Think of the day when we can go there and investigate all that is in there,’” Choe said. “‘Don’t you get excited just thinking about it?’ He used to always ask me.”

After returning to South Korea to teach at Seoul National University in 1994, Choe maintained his interest and research on the subject of the DMZ by attending the DMZ Forum and engaging in other activities. He eventually dove much deeper into researching the DMZ when he became the president of the National Institute of Ecology.

“With the cooperation of the military, we installed cameras inside the DMZ and collected a lot of video data,” Choe said, underscoring the necessity of “actively conducting investigations and research in any form possible to accumulate plentiful DMZ-related data.”

Choe also assured me that using the DMZ for tourism would be hugely successful.

“My advisor had told me that, if a DMZ park were to be made, it should be a combination of the US’ Gettysburg National Military Park and Yosemite National Park,” Choe said.

“Yosemite has the ecology while Gettysburg is a place with war history, but the DMZ on the Korean Peninsula has both. If done right, I think it will become a place where people from all over the world would want to visit at least once,” Choe continued.

“Many people who come to South Korea for sightseeing visit Imjingak, and although the pain of war is present, paradoxically, it is also the place with the best environmental preservation among the temperate regions [of the world]. If we tell people that we can show them both these things, then many more tourists will come,” Choe explained further.

Choe also touched on the example of Germany’s unification process. Although the Korean and German cases are different, Choe said that in order for Korea to reunify, it is necessary to create many exchanges the same way East and West Germany did in the past.

“The German ecologist and journalist Caroline Möhring said that ‘as we interacted with each other in soft areas such as the environment, sports, and music, then one day, unification just came to us,’” Choe said.

“We also don’t want peace to suddenly be pushed onto us, but if we continue with exchanges in sports, art, music, culture, and academia, I think we will end up living together at some point, even if there is no one particular individual who suggests we unite,” Choe explained.

That day, Choe said in a talk with Kim Dong-yeon that “South Korea succeeded in reforestation in a short time, but the diversity of the species of trees is severely lacking.”

In response to this issue, Choe proposed for Gyeonggi Province to develop the DMZ into “a giant tree nursery that takes biodiversity into consideration” to prepare for the reforestation of North Korea.

For the past 10-20 years, Choe has also been proposing more concrete measures to preserve the DMZ, including having all new roads in the DMZ area be built as flyovers.

“At most, the width is 4 km long, so it is possible. I thought that at least this should be done in order to prevent any interference with the ecosystem,” Choe argued.

“There are only a dozen or so main roads linking North and South Korea, but if the government says they won’t make any roads in order to preserve biodiversity, then there will be no way to stop the backlash from local residents,” Choe says.

“The most necessary thing to preserve the DMZ’s ecosystem is to minimize development and firmly achieve a national social consensus on preserving it,” he said. “If we create a comprehensive master plan and communicate with the people, the Korean people will fully understand and make the first move,” Choe continued.

Meanwhile, the DMZ Forum hosted 15 academic forums in total, including on topics such as green governance of the border area, agricultural cooperation strategies between Gyeonggi Province and Hwang-hae Province, coordinated response strategy of Gyeonggi Province on agricultural cooperation and climate crisis in the border region of North and South Korea, and the Gyeonggi Province social dialogue program for peace and unification.

A provincial town hall including 200 residents from the northern area of Gyeonggi Province also took place on Sept. 24 at Imjingak Pyeonghwa Nuri Park.

By Park Kyung-man, senior staff writer

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