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The Korean peninsula’s nature and bio­di­ver­sity has suf­fered immensely since the 1940s due to severe defor­esta­tion, wars and pol­lu­tion by unman­aged wide-​scale indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion in the post-​war years. The eco­log­i­cal sta­tus of the Korean Demil­i­tarised Zone (DMZ), though, is an excep­tion to the dete­ri­o­rated ecosys­tems of the penin­sula, but unfor­tu­nately under threat.

The DMZ, the no man’s land between North and South Korea, delib­er­ately depop­u­lated and sur­rounded by heav­ily armed watch­tow­ers, has been in place since the Korean war ended in 1953. It is a buffer zone between the two states where the nat­ural envi­ron­ment of a pre­vi­ously war-​torn area has self-​recovered to trans­form itself into a well-​preserved ecosys­tem that har­bours diverse nat­ural habi­tats. It is now a par­adise for wildlife, pro­vid­ing refuge for at least 67 of the world’s most endan­gered species such as the white-​naped crane, Amur leop­ard and Asian black bear, and the orig­i­nal bio­di­ver­sity of the peninsula.

But this grad­ual return to nature is under threat, as agri­cul­ture is encroach­ing on the DMZ. The land bor­der­ing the DMZ is already being reclaimed for intense pro­duc­tion with rice fields and plan­ta­tions of gin­seng. And with food secu­rity as a dri­ving fac­tor fur­ther agri­cul­tural devel­op­ment is expected, destroy­ing (large) parts of the restored habi­tat and clear­ing away regrown plant life. There­fore, at the IUCN World Con­ser­va­tion con­gress, Sep­tem­ber this year on the South Korean Island of Jeju, sci­en­tists and experts on the area are plead­ing with the south­ern gov­ern­ment to offer the region inter­na­tion­ally pro­tected status.

It is the dream of Kwi-​Gon Kim, Chair­man of the Korea Demil­i­tarised Zone (DMZ) Coun­cil, that an Amur tiger will be spot­ted at the foot of Jiri Moun­tain on the south­ern half of the Korean Penin­sula. For that to hap­pen, Kim, who is also Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus at Seoul National Uni­ver­sity, and the Korea DMZ Coun­cil, believe they need to acti­vate the North­east Asia Eco­log­i­cal Net­work (NEAE­coNET). NEAE­coNET is an ini­tia­tive designed to pro­mote a sin­gle, con­tin­u­ous ecosys­tem through­out North­east Asia, includ­ing Mon­go­lia, Rus­sia, China, North and South Korea.

Accord­ing to Kim, for the NEAE­coNET to be suc­cess­ful, the Korean Penin­sula would need bet­ter coop­er­a­tion on envi­ron­men­tal issues. This would allow for the con­ser­va­tion and restora­tion of species and their habi­tats in both North and South Korea. A crit­i­cal ele­ment of that coop­er­a­tion will be the DMZ.

A res­o­lu­tion on the pro­tected sta­tus will not pass dur­ing this week’s con­gress, as there will not be a North Korean del­e­ga­tion attend­ing the con­gress, much to the regret of Hong Koo Lee, for­mer prime min­is­ter of South Korea and chair­man of the organ­is­ing committee:

The above news item is partly reprinted from mate­ri­als avail­able at IUCN. Orig­i­nal text may be edited for con­tent and length.

(Source: IUCN, 08.09.2012; Asian Cor­re­spon­dent, 07.09.2012; the Guardian, 06.09.2012)