Korean Demilitarized Zone 2022 Series
This series made up of four pictures relates my visit to the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in August 2022. This zone represents the divide of the Korean Peninsula, the separation of families, the war that raged from 1950 to 1953 between both Koreas, the millions of deaths, but it also represents armistice, hopes of reunification, and longing for peace.
To create this series, I selected pictures that I took during my visit at the Korean Demilitarized Zone and that spoke to me weeks after the fact. I realized the power they held only after discussing about the visit with my entourage – and that’s when I knew that I had to give voice to these pictures.
The pictures in this series are treated as documentary material. They were not planned, were not reframed. They were taken on the moment, hastily sometimes, in non-ideal conditions. I want to shed some light on the visit of the Korean Demilitarized Zone as a non-Korean individual, with a critical eye. In this series, I do not take a side for one country or the other. Rather, I want to show the various ways we can understand the DMZ and the propaganda surrounding it.
Propaganda
As visitors of the DMZ, tourists are bombarded with propaganda from both Koreas. The observatory enables tourists to look at the “propaganda village” and at the North-Korean flagpole.
The village seen here is a North-Korean village named Kijŏng-dong (평화리) that is supposedly built in a way for visitors to notice it immediately, but is apparently a fake village with no inhabitants. The flagpole war, as they called it, was a rivalry between both Koreas to have a flagpole higher than the other country. During the visit, we were told that South Korea agreed to lose this senseless flagpole war – just like an older sibling would do to please the youngest. The paternalistic explanation of this “war” is also part of the South Korean propaganda to keep visitors on their side. Many propagandas interact and intersect at the Korean DMZ.
To depict the different conflicts and discourses present in this picture, I have decided to use the colors blue and red as key elements. Those colors are present on both the North and the South Korean flags, a sign of common history, of ownership conflict, of opposite discourses.