South Korea Aims to Rebrand the DMZ

When the Korean War ended close to sixty years ago, the two sides agreed to create a four-kilometer demilitarized buffer zone between the two countries, an area that would be without military equipment or anything else. Plenty of soldiers are nearby, of course, but the area has grown into a pristine, untouched environment.

So untouched, in fact, that when author Alan Weisman released the excellent 2007 book The World Without Us, in which he tries to figure out what would happen to the planet if humans just somehow all disappeared one day, he visited the DMZ to get clues of what happens to land that’s gone without human intervention.

That natural image of the DMZ is what South Korea is trying to emphasize in a rebranding effort for what former US President Bill Clinton called "the scariest place on Earth," according to the BBC.Continue reading...