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DREAMING OF EARTH

Since 1953, a four-kilometer-wide buffer lined with artillery placements, fortified fencing, and military troops has separated North and South Korea. Yet amid the surrounding menace, a miracle has occurred in this forbidding no-man’s-land: Absent human presence, over 65 years the Korean Demilitarized Zone has reverted to wilderness and become one of Asia’s most important wildlife refuges.

To Korean artist Jae-Eun Choi, this blooming, resurrected war zone symbolized hope for healing both the Earth and the schism between the two nations it divides. At the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, she and Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect Shigeru Ban presented a model for a 13-kilometer, garden-lined floating walkway that would wind through the heart of the DMZ, connecting the two Koreas. Constructed of natural materials and elevated to protect visitors from landmines, along its length would be towers for viewing nature and open-air Jung Ja meditation pavilions designed by invited architects and artists from both Koreas and beyond. It would lead to a seed bank for conserving indigenous DMZ plants, and a “knowledge bank” — a library of DMZ ecology and shared history.

Titled Dreaming of Earth, its intent was to promote peaceful coexistence between the two Koreas and to call attention to the need to preserve the DMZ’s precious ecosystem, home to more than 5,000 plant and animal species, including 100 that are endangered.

In October, 2017, Choi and a team of internationally renowned colleagues gathered at the Seoul Museum of History to formally propose actually building it. Along with Shigeru Ban, they included Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson, German architect Sebastian Behmann, Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata, Mumbai architect Bijoy Jain, South Korean artists Lee Ufan and Lee Bul, and architects Seung H-sang and Minsuk Cho. A collaborating scientist, Jaeseung Jeong, explained that the knowledge and seed banks would be housed in a nearby abandoned military invasion tunnel.

North Korean architects and artists had yet to be chosen, because communications were then severed between the two neighboring nations, and this bold proposal’s chances seemed unlikely. But now, with both Koreas having competed in the Winter Olympics under a joint flag and with diplomacy reemerging, Dreaming of Earth could become a reality.

We, the undersigned writers, artists, architects, musicians, and scientists, believe that collaboration between adversaries is far better than confrontation and threats. We urge the governments of both Koreas to support this imaginative initiative by these visionary artists and architects. Those of us who are not Koreans urge our own governments to support it as well. For too long, the only human intervention in the Korean DMZ has been to seed it with land mines meant to destroy life. Dreaming of Earth proposes to sow seeds of hope, and to unite the preservation of nature with the greatest expression of our human nature.

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