The New Parallel: Urban and Agrarian Political, Environmental, and Architectural Landscapes of the Demilitarized Zone

North and South Korea share the most heavily armed military border in the world. Technically both sides are still at war dating back to 1950. The 38th parallel, also known as The Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) is a 156-mile long by 2.5- mile wide border condition with over two million plus known landmines buried with-in its boundaries. The Juxtapositions of the financial, political, economical, and military modalities could not be more drastically different between North and South Korea. North Korea is a communist autocratic military dictatorship and has one of the worlds lowest Gross Domestic Products (GDP). South Korea is a capitalistic democratic republic with the worlds thirteenth highest GDP and famous for its industrial complexes and economic export growth.

The fall of the Soviet Union and its infrastructural resources coupled with copious other environmental landscape management disasters has led to the contamination of North Korea’s water table and the degradation of nearly all agrarian soils used for farming. Imminent famine, guaranteed to equal if not greatly surpass the North Korean Famine of the 1990’s, which resulted in over 3.5 million human beings starving to death, is exactly what is to be expected. North Korea has 25 million inhabitants and they are to become refugees in their own state sooner rather than later because their government refuses to provide for its people. Instead the North Korean Government seeks to build a nuclear arsenal in the name of self-reliance.