A view of the North
North Korea seen from the Ganghwa Peace Observatory..
I recently visited Ganghwado Jejeokbong Peace Observatory, which is in the northern area of the Civilian Restricted Zone that abuts the DMZ. From the observatory, you can see the Democratic People’s Republic just 2 km way across the estuary.
The Observatory entrance.
A guide gives a talk in front of a model of the area.
Ganghwa is an island, and not far from where I live. But as you can see from this map it’s necessary to take a sizeable detour via Gimpo due to the restrictions imposed by the DMZ. The blue pointer is the location of the Observatory and the X is where we live. The dotted line is the border. Note how close this is to Seoul!
There was quite a lot of fighting around Ganghwado during the Korean War, but there’s also an interesting back story, linking it to an earlier violent period, and one that serves to put things in a wider historical context.
Determined to force the Korean government to end its isolationism, an armed American merchant schooner named the SS General Sherman sailed for Korea in 1866. The owner was hoping to open Joseon to trade, just as another American, Commodore Perry, had successfully done in Japan in 1853. But the crew outraged the locals, forcibly breaching the promulgation made by the government that forbade any contact with foreigners. The crew where murdered and the ship caught fire and sank after it sailed into the Taedong River which flows through Pyongyang.
In 1871 the so-called United States Expedition to Korea was initiated with the intention of finding out what had happened to the Sherman and to make a show of strength that would force Joseon into ending its ‘closed doors’ policy. The ‘show of strength’ was made predominantly on and around Ganghwa Island. The American stormed the fortresses there, and in the end over 200 Korean Soldiers were killed. But if the United States had hoped this show of military muscle would persuade the Koreans, it totally failed. The governed refused to negotiate and even strengthened the policy of isolation.
But the writing was on the wall. In fact, it was Japan that sealed Joseon’s fate. In 1868 the Meiji government had asked for diplomatic relations with Joseon, which were rejected. Like the United States, Japan then staged in 1875 an armed protest using a warship , and then pressed the kingdom to open its ports. The Treaty of Ganghwa was signed in February 1876. By 1905 Japan had deprived Joseon of its diplomatic sovereignty and made it protectorate. In 1910 it was annexed and became a colony. This tutelage endured until imperial Japan’s defeat in 1945.
American servicemen stand atop one of the forts on Ganghwa Island after its capture. 1871.
Not surprising, the North Korean regime milks the propaganda value of the sinking of the General Sherman, holding rallies in front of a monument dedicated to the killing of Americans and the ship’s sinking. The monument is close to where the USS Pueblo is anchored - the U.S. Navy intelligence ship captured while in the East Sea in January 1968.
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I have to say North Korea looked rather bucolic from the Ganghwa Observatory. Very unspoilt. Through a telescope you can even zoom in on farmers working in the fields and soldiers on patrol. Perhaps because I’d recently been stuck in horrendous traffic near Seoul and obliged to drive at a snail’s pace along a polluted highways flanked by rank upon rank of ugly tower blocks, I was struck by a huge irony.
Ecologically speaking, North Korea’s carbon footprint is tiny compared to its competitor to the south. Carbon dioxide emissions are estimated to be about 56.38 million metric tons in 2021 in North Korea. Its GHG emissions peaked in the early 1990s, and according to UN statistics, have declined by roughly 70% since 1993. As a result, North Korean CO2 emissions account for only 0.15% of global emissions. In 2020, the greenhouse gases emitted in South Korea totalled 656.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. An average person produces 13.5 tons of greenhouse gases per year.
What does this suggest? Is a totalitarian regime that brutally curbs the freedom of its populace, and due to basic energy shortages is obliged to turn off the lights at night, the kind of state best styled to ensure we reach the target of Net Zero in 2030? Is North Korea a role-model for balancing greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere by removing them from the atmosphere?
Of course not! What the view from the observatory does not show us the fact that North Korea is suffering total environmental collapse. An obvious sign of this is the contrast between the densely wooded hills in the South and the barren one’s you can see across the DMZ.
The following is an account of a visit made by Western scientists back in 2013 when it was still possible to go there:
‘When ecologist Margaret Palmer visited North Korea, she didn’t know what to expect, but what she saw was beyond belief. From river’s edge to the tops of hills, the entire landscape was lifeless and barren. Villages were little more than hastily constructed shantytowns where residents wore camouflage netting, presumably in preparation for a foreign invasion they feared to be imminent. Emaciated looking farmers tilled the earth with plows pulled by oxen and trudged through half-frozen streams to collect nutrient-rich sediments for their fields. “We went to a national park where we saw maybe one or two birds, but other than that you don’t see any wildlife,” Palmer says.
“The landscape is just basically dead,” adds Dutch soil scientist Joris van der Kamp. “It’s a difficult condition to live in, to survive.”
Palmer and Van der Kamp were part of an international delegation of scientists invited by the government of North Korea and funded by the American Association for the Advancement of Science to attend a recent conference on ecological restoration in the long-isolated country. Through site visits and presentations by North Korean scientists they witnessed a barren landscape that is teetering on collapse, ravaged by decades of environmental degradation.
“There are no branches of trees on the ground,” Van der Kamp says. “Everything is collected for food or fuel or animal food, almost nothing is left for the soil. We saw people mining clay material from the rivers in areas that had been polished by ice and warming their hands along the roadside by small fires from the small amounts of organic bits they could find.
Since 2013 things have only gotten worse., North Korea has seen its longest drought and rainy seasons in over a century. Kim Jong Un and his cronies make appropriate noises, calling for immediate steps to counteract the impact of climate change. But it’s hopeless. After all, they spend all their money on armaments.
Which is to all just to say that appearances can be deceptive. I hate the way South Korea’s race to become a modern ‘developed’ capitalist nation has devastated the country’s environment, brutally slicing it up with highways and herding people into tower block ghettos. But I’m certainly glad I live here rather than across that 2 km stretch of water that laps against Ganghwa island.
NOTES
The archive photo from 1871 is from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_expedition_to_Korea#/media/File:Ganghwa_3-edit.jpg
The quote is from: ‘Inside North Korea's Environmental Collapse. Scientists who recently visited the hermit nation report the situation is dire’, by Philip McKenna. Nova. March 7, 2013, available at:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/inside-north-koreas-environmental-collapse/