https://www.sapiens.org/culture/korean-dmz-estuary-politics-war-borders-diaspora/ New Stories All Stories Podcast Seasons Episodes Training Contents Contents Table of contents Introduction 0 Why Write for the Public? 1 What to Expect, from Pitch to Publication 2 How to Write a Pitch 3 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 1: Structure 4 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 2: Style 5 Navigating Ethics and Reducing Harms 6 Habits of Thriving Public Anthropologists 7 Cultivating the Craft of Writing 8 Table of contents Select Introduction 0 Why Write for the Public? 1 What to Expect, from Pitch to Publication 2 How to Write a Pitch 3 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 1: Structure 4 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 2: Style 5 Navigating Ethics and Reducing Harms 6 Habits of Thriving Public Anthropologists 7 Cultivating the Craft of Writing 8 essay / Stranger Lands Uncovering an Archaeology of U.S. Empire in Panama Charlotte Williams An anthropologist investigates how archaeology helped the U.S. colonize the Panama Canal Zone--just as the current U.S. government threatens to retake it. essay / Borderlands Why Do Swallows Fly to the Korean DMZ? T. Yejoo Kim An anthropologist discovers diasporic flights--including her own--that begin at and return to the waters of the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. essay / Snapshot Forest as Kin and Pantry in the Himalayas Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia and Charisma K. Lepcha In the Sikkim and Kalimpong Himalayas in Northeast India, supply chains are often interrupted by changing monsoon systems that damage highways. Responding to uncertainty, communities are reclaiming ancestral foodways--drawing inspiration from the past to move into the future. essay / Crossroads How Societies Morph With the Seasons Cecilia Padilla-Iglesias An evolutionary anthropologist details seasonal changes among foraging communities--and distills how the fixed political structures of industrialized societies are an outlier in human history. essay / Expressions Shading U.S. Empire in Puerto Rico's Ballroom Scene Dozandri Mendoza A linguistic anthropologist explores the queer Ballroom scene in San Juan--and how performers are incorporating critiques of colonialism into the art form. essay / Field Notes How Cultural Knowledge Sustained Desert Farms in the Ancient Andes Ari Caramanica An archaeologist who studies past farming practices in the north coast of Peru argues these offer models for navigating current climate crises. poem / Counterpoint Earworm Uzma Falak A poet-anthropologist listens to an accidental field recording from Kashmir: What might be dismissed as noise becomes a way to unsettle the settled--making audible dispossession and theft, stealth and refusal. essay / Field Notes Caring Across Distance--One Call at a Time Tanja Ahlin An anthropologist explores how a phone call home may seem simple but carries layers of meaning for migrating nurses and their families in India. video / Unearthed Excavating the Traces of Ice Age Foragers Aaron Martin A filmmaker showcases archaeologists unearthing tiny lithics that evidence the presence of hunters from 13,000 years ago in what is today Michigan. essay / Excerpt Reclaiming Collective Life in a Fractured U.S. Anand Pandian After Donald Trump's 2016 presidential election win, an anthropologist set out across the U.S. to understand the nation's deepening divides. In the new book Something Between Us, he grapples with these rifts and how to repair them. essay / Field Notes Ancient Tools in East Asia Reveal Middle Paleolithic Innovation Ben Marwick An archaeologist explains his team's insights into how Quina scrapers in southwest China overturn long-standing assumptions about the region's humans more than 50,000 years ago. op-ed / Viewpoint When Wartime Plunder Comes to Campus Petra M. Creamer An archaeologist considers whether students should learn from antiquities looted from Iraq. essay / Icons Why Are People Worshipping the Virgin Mary as a Goddess? Emma Cieslik Amid a goddess worship revival, some feminists are revering the mother of Jesus as a deity, defying Christian doctrines and confronting the use of Mary as a handmaiden of patriarchy. essay / Material Culture How Virtual Reality Is Restoring Liberia's Culture Craig Stevens and Chrislyn Laurie Laurore Traveling Treasures is a new project led by a team of anthropologists that puts Liberians directly in touch with their dispersed cultural heritage through immersive technologies designed to bridge continents and histories. essay / Crossroads In Japan, Rethinking What It Means to Care for the Dead Anne Allison Facing an increasing aging population and other societal shifts, people are looking beyond traditional family-based mortuary practices. essay / Decoded Huh? The Valuable Role of Interjections Bob Holmes Utterances like "um," "wow," and "mm-hmm" aren't garbage, they keep conversations flowing. op-ed / Viewpoint When Calls for Vengeance Go Online Laurence Ralph An anthropologist reckons with how digital media has changed youth gang culture dynamics--and what can be done to combat the spread of deadly rumors. essay / Wayfinding A Poetics of Liberation: An Imagined Archive Alma Simba A Tanzanian historian and poet conjures alternative engagements with Black African women who were marginalized by violent colonial histories and imprisoned in the archives. As the 2024 poet-in-resident at the magazine, she imaginatively reaches for new possibilities. essay / Uncanny Valley The Hopes and Hazards for AI in Reconstructing Ancient Worlds Colleen Morgan An archaeologist explains how generative artificial intelligence has the potential to reshape our views of ancient people, arguing that a critical perspective is needed to use this technical innovation and avoid misrepresentations. essay / Field Notes "Stop This Invader!"--The War on Spotted Lanternflies Stephanie Palazzo An anthropologist reflects on the racist undertones of some U.S. efforts to eradicate the spotted lanternfly, an insect from Asia deemed invasive. poem / Counterpoint Erasure I and Erasure VI Uzma Falak In two erasure poems, a poet-anthropologist imagines alternative futures using text from the 1846 Treaty of Amritsar, through which the British "sold" Kashmir to a despotic Dogra ruler. The poems are from a six-part series titled Song of the First Spring. essay / Field Notes How Heavy Metal Fuels Indigenous Revival in Patagonia Erin Wheeler Streusand An anthropologist plunges into the world of Patagonian heavy metal music in Argentina to explore how the genre relates to language and cultural revitalization. poem / Identities Tallahassee Ghazal Noland Blain Using an ancient Arabic poetic form, a poet-archaeologist from Florida cycles through feelings of entrapment growing up queer in the U.S. South. But in the end, they celebrate love for this place--and that "most of us are breathing." op-ed / Viewpoint Fighting for Justice for the Dead--and the Living Sean D. Tallman, Ashley Smith, Ariel Gruenthal-Rankin, and Donovan Adams A group of forensic anthropologists argues their field must reject the myth of pure objectivity and challenge systemic inequities through advocacy and activism. poem / Reflections Debitage jade lomas-trejo Using an original poetic form, a poet chips away at a difficult history--becoming an agent of her own remaking and more than just an estranged daughter. essay / In Flux Tracing Roti's Pasts, Presents, and Futures Mariam Durrani and Nilosree Biswas The Roti Collective, a community-based research project, explores the layered histories that brought a flatbread from the Indian subcontinent around the world. essay / Pastimes In Iron Age Britain, Descent Was Matrilineal Rachel Pope New analyses from Iron Age burials reveal that women remained in their natal communities and provided the key to kinship. The findings offer essential clues about gender roles and social structures in ancient Europe. poem / Counterpoint Broken Sonnets for the Anthropocene Sneha Subramanian Kanta The speaker in this broken sonnet form utters disobedience for structures that extract care in the Anthropocene. interview / Reflections David Graeber's Lasting Influence on Anthropology and Activism Josh Reno and Holly High When activist and anthropologist Graeber died unexpectedly in 2020, scholars gathered to mourn him. Contributors to a resulting volume, As If Already Free, reflect on his legacy. essay / Field Notes Connecting Local Communities to Paleoanthropology in Kenya Kirsten Jenkins, Kieran McNulty, Joshua Siembo, and George Umoja On Rusinga Island, a grassroots group is celebrating the field assistants who helped find famous fossils and inspiring future generations to study science and ancient history. poem / Dwelling Pequi Winds Jacqueline Ferraz de Lima A poet-anthropologist reflects on the resistance of rural women in the Brazilian Cerrado whose wisdom and knowledge help cultivate life amid the devastation of large-scale plantations. essay / Field Notes Launching Starship in South Texas Anna Szolucha An anthropologist witnesses the first integrated flight attempt of the world's largest rocket--and the wide range of responses it elicited from people. 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An anthropologist discovers diasporic flights--including her own--that begin at and return to the waters of the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. By T. Yejoo Kim 25 Jun 2025 Standing at a lookout spot adjacent to a stone wall, a small group holding a blue umbrella looks across a large body of water at the opposite shore. A family visiting Ganghwa Island on the southern side of the Korean DMZ peers through a surveillance camera. T. Yejoo Kim WITHIN A FEW HOURS of landing in South Korea from Los Angeles on a hot July day in 2023, I boarded a bus with my suitcase and headed toward the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Alongside other peace activists and organizers from near and far, I was going to an event commemorating the 70th anniversary of the signing of the armistice between North and South Korea on July 27, 1953--the day that began the longest ceasefire in history. As the youngest person in the group--and the one who had traveled the farthest--many on the bus looked at me with curiosity as I tried not to give into fatigue from jet lag and the summer humidity. We came to a rest stop, and one lady in her 50s offered some water and her pocket handkerchief as ways to spark a conversation with me. She asked where I came from and why I had decided to join the event. I initially gave her a modest introduction, telling her I was a researcher invested in the DMZ and antiwar movements in Korea. As an anthropologist, I had been conducting research and interviews at various sites and villages along the border for several years. To learn more about the author's work, listen on the SAPIENS podcast: "Ceasefire From the Earth and Sky." She was impressed, as most "young people" are not interested in the DMZ, peace, or unification. But she pressed on, sensing there was more to the story: why here and why now? To that, I responded, "My grandpa is from over there," pointing to the outlines of human habitation at one end of the estuary that meet the watery southwestern edge of the DMZ. She wrapped her arms around my shoulder and said, "My father too." She gently reached for my hands and introduced me to the group. "She's a third-generation sirhyangmin (silhyangmin). She's traveled across the ocean to join us here today. She is a jebi (jebi)." The jebi, or barn swallow, has long captivated the cultural imagination of Koreans. Today many people displaced from the north, called sirhyangmin, view jebis with nostalgic affection. During the peak years of the Korean War (1950-1953) and after, many sirhyangmin resettled on the several islands in the estuary that make up Ganghwa County, creating new communities of northerners and southerners. Ganghwa residents have built nests across the islands for these birds, who spend the wintry months in southern climates across the Pacific but return to the estuary when warm again. For them, the jebi is at once a harbinger of hope, an assuring sign of return, and a symbol of available freedoms otherwise foreclosed for sirhyangmin. In South Korea, a barn swallow lands on a wire line. Seung-il Ryu/NurPhoto/Getty Images Since 1953, the 250-kilometer-long artificial boundary of the DMZ has cut through the middle of the Korean peninsula. The demilitarized buffer zone created more than seven decades ago between the two warring states often feels impenetrable and permanent. However, the DMZ is livelier and more fluid than it seems. In fact, much of the DMZ crosses water--oceans, estuaries, and rivers. A quarter of this boundary falls upon the Han River estuary (hanganghagu), a "neutral" zone according to the Korean Armistice Agreement that established the DMZ. This status legally allows civilians to conduct life as they did before the war. Yet the military guard posts, pointed artillery, and surveilling soldiers that outline the estuary indicate a reality that is far from neutral. In the midsummer heat, the receded waters of the estuary revealed a shallow depth. The person sitting next to me on the bus explained that in the past, before the division, when the waters ebbed, people would leave their boats behind and walk across the estuary to meet their family, business partners, and lovers. For centuries, the estuary was the source of life for the peninsula. The mineral richness in the estuarial mixing of fresh and salt water allowed the surrounding agriculture and wildlife to flourish. Today death awaits within its wiry edges, and only the birds are seen flying beyond the barbed wire. LIKE THE JEBI, I, too, have spent most of my life unrooted on the warmer edges of the Pacific--in California. And I have come, again and again, to this estuary, only to find my relations here were as rooted as they were erratic. The first time I saw the estuary was by accident during a family road trip from Seoul a year before the 70th anniversary of the armistice. Until then, I had little familiarity with the provinces of the north. I had come with my uncle, who had an intimate, lived grasp of this place. As I drove, he looked at me with a stunned, tearful face, requesting I pull to the side of the road. "Why did you bring me to this place?" he asked. "What do you mean? Does this place mean something to you?" I replied, confused. The Han River estuary--now blocked off by the military--recedes to only a few meters deep during low tide. Before the Korean War, people could walk across during shallow times. T. Yejoo Kim Sirhyangmin visitors look over the estuary from a viewpoint where North Korea is visible on a clear day. T. Yejoo Kim I tried to wrest an explanation from him inside the stopped car, unsure whether we should continue or return to Seoul. He finally explained how it was difficult for him to be reminded of how close we were to Hwanghae--the province we could glimpse across the border, where my grandfather and many displaced residents of the islands came from. The closer we got to the heavily militarized border, the possibility of ever arriving seemed further away. The proximity had only brought him closer to a reality of a cemented division that he would rather not face. However, like the homing instinct of the jebi (gwisobonneung), a similar instinct within drew us back to the estuary. As a Korean American, I had long been interested in the ongoing war that had uprooted my family. The war, which was supported by the U.S. military in the south, took the lives of as many as 3 million civilians and left millions more displaced. Researching the DMZ as an anthropologist has been a way to come to terms with this history. However, before coming to do my fieldwork, I had mostly kept an academic distance, engaging with the topic through research and scholarship that speaks to the lingering effects of Korea's division. I had learned how communities across the north and south edges of the estuary were long connected through kinship and trade, but the Korean War turned them into enemies overnight. Even family members turned against one another, and many forged new associations with the communist north or "free" south. This academic distance from the war began to collapse, however, when my uncle and I returned unexpectedly as jebis that day. And with each flight back, the distance continues to close itself as I meet more jebis from the same ancestral hometown. ONE SUCH ENCOUNTER brought me to Kim Young-ae, a fellow swallow I met at a pro-democracy rally in Seoul. Kim, now 70 years old, is a second-generation sirhyangmin whose parents fled from Hwanghae Province during the war. Her family resettled across the border in Ganghwa, where she grew up and went to school. She had lived a long and impressive life as a scholar, diplomat, and community organizer both in Korea and abroad before retiring and returning to the estuary. The author walks behind Kim Young-Ae, a fellow sister of the Han River estuary. Water from the estuary (on the right) is captured in a reservoir for farming (on the left). T. Yejoo Kim "It must have been fate," Kim said of our meeting. The next week, she invited me to visit her on Gyodong, the island where she now lives in Ganghwa County. We spent the day together, sharing our life stories and the ways we had found ourselves drawn to the estuary. In her office, Kim showed me a map of the Korean peninsula, famously shaped like a rabbit with the eastern coast as the animal's back. Kim pointed at the estuary and asked, "Where are we?" "The belly?" I responded. "That's right. This is where life begins, at the womb," she said. For Kim, the history of Korea and its relations with the world begins at the estuary. For centuries, the area served as an entryway for international trade and was heavily protected against foreign powers by the military. Much of the fortressing of the estuary began to crumble when the unequal Treaty of Ganghwa with Japan was signed in 1876. This paved the way for Korea to be subjected to colonial violence; Japan made Korea a protectorate in 1905 and fully annexed the country by 1910. After World War II, and with the end of the Japanese empire, Korean liberation was quickly curtailed with the beginning of the rising Cold War order, when the peninsula was divided along the 38th parallel and forcibly occupied by the Soviet Union in the north and the U.S. in the south. Kim Young-Ae points to the Han River estuary on a map of Korea, often described as the peninsula's "womb" (chotchul; jeojjul). The word can also be translated to "lifeline," as in the lifeline between mother and child, or in the sense of a life-giving river. T. Yejoo Kim In Ganghwa, where many northerners resettled, including Kim's family, the years following the division were fraught with violent conflict, including between new and old residents. The estuary saw some of the bloodiest internecine violence and civilian massacres to have occurred during the Korean War. While the islands remain heavily militarized today, the conflicts evolved into a quiet coexistence as the Cold War thawed in the last few decades of the 20th century. Today the islands are sparsely populated, mostly made up of an aging population that relies heavily on agriculture. Kim asked me, "Do you know what the function of an estuary is?" Not being able to recollect what I had surely learned in a high school environmental science course, I responded, "No, not really." "This is where salt and freshwater meet and purifies the water so that it can flow as freshwater into the country," Kim explained. "Isn't that remarkable?" AS MUCH AS the estuary has served as a site of unspeakable colonial and wartime pain, it has also absorbed blood and tears so that life could live on. For many decades, divisions within the communities seemed impossible to overcome. Bereaved families lived next to perpetrators, and surviving victims from the north were long silenced by the anti-communist regime in the south. Despite this shared pain, however, Ganghwa's communities emerged as examples of how people of the estuary, torn apart by war, could come together again. On a clear day, Hwanghae Province in North Korea, home to many sirhyangmins, can be seen from this viewpoint on Ganghwa Island. T. Yejoo Kim This is precisely what Kim and perhaps even the activists on that hot summer day sought to impress on me by naming me a fellow jebi--that, after all this time, we can still learn to relate to and live with one another. While we sirhyangmin may be like the jebi, returning to rest and remember with others, unlike the bird, we cannot cross over the estuary. Perhaps that is why nests for the birds can be found all over the islands. Although we can't go, the jebis may, in our stead, meet our loved ones. T. Yejoo Kim T. Yejoo Kim is a sociocultural anthropologist researching the political economy of the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). She is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her dissertation builds upon the anthropology of borders and the economy, diaspora and transpacific studies, and critical disability frameworks. Kim's research has been funded by the Fulbright Program and the Korea Foundation. 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