Civilian Control Zone, South Korea — In the quiet hum of Cho Seong-hoan’s beehive, there is a story far older than honey. The bees, he likes to say, are lucky. They fly beyond fences and barbed wire, carrying their secrets across a divided land where humans cannot tread. His father once whispered the same, remembering the days when borders did not bind the peninsula in two. And now, in the year of 2024, the bees still fly, as if to remind us that nature knows no walls.
A Legacy Carried on Wings
Cho Seong-hoan, 59, sits just a stone’s throw away from the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), where the echoes of a long-ago war still linger in the air. His family’s farm rests less than a kilometer from the notorious stretch of land, a place laced with landmines and memories of division. “I envy my bees,” Cho reflects, his eyes distant. “They can go where I cannot.”
After his father’s passing in 2022, Cho took over the family’s beekeeping work, continuing a legacy born in hardship. His father, who fled from North Korea before the war tore the peninsula in two, had returned to the land in the 1970s, granted special permission to farm in the Civilian Control Zone (CCZ). Here, a small group of beekeepers tend to their hives in a 10-kilometer stretch of rice fields, forests, and silence—a land forever on edge, where the hum of bees is as constant as the hum of soldiers stationed nearby.
The Sweetness of Reconciliation
The honey these beekeepers harvest is no ordinary honey. It is born from a land that has grown wild, where flowers bloom freely among forgotten battlefields. The CCZ, a heavily militarized area, has seen little human interference for decades, allowing the natural world to flourish in an unexpected sanctuary. The bees drink from diverse flowers, their nectar enriched by a unique biodiversity that lends the honey an unmatched flavor.
Cho and his fellow beekeepers produce honey not for riches, but for something deeper—a sweetness that symbolizes hope in a land long divided. For some, like Park Jung-sun, the work is personal. Park’s father, like Cho’s, fled North Korea during the war. “I want to lay my father’s ashes here, on this land,” Park says quietly. “One half here, and one half in his homeland—if the day ever comes when we are united again.”
A Borderland Blooming in Silence
The Civilian Control Zone is a strange and beautiful place. It stands as a testament to both conflict and peace, a land where soldiers march and flowers bloom side by side. Farmers like Cho and Park enter through military checkpoints, where their identities are scrutinized as much as the buzzing bees they carry with them. The road to the fields winds along the Imjin River, which, like the DMZ itself, is a border between worlds.
Yet, this land, for all its scars, has been allowed to heal. The lack of human activity has created a refuge for wildlife. Rare birds soar overhead, and flowers carpet the fields in a tapestry of colors. The bees find their way through this strange paradise, crossing lines that were drawn in blood but mean nothing to the wind or the trees.
Cho’s bees often wander close to the DMZ, a 4-kilometer-wide strip that separates North and South Korea. Some say the bees even cross into the North, oblivious to the politics that bind the land. In their flight, there is a kind of freedom, a small rebellion against a history that has divided families for generations.
The Taste of Home and the Future of Hope
Each year, Cho’s hives produce about 1,000 liters of honey—his “ZDC Honey,” named for the zone that has shaped its creation. It is sold in half-liter glass jars, each one priced at around $33. The honey is treasured for its purity, a sweet reminder of a land that, despite the tensions that surround it, still blooms.
For Cho, continuing the work his father began was never in question. It was more than a livelihood—it was a way to stay connected to a homeland that had been divided but not forgotten. “So many people still long for their home,” he says, thinking of those who were displaced, like his own family. “We cannot return. But our bees… they return every day.”
In this way, the bees carry more than pollen; they carry the weight of history, the hope of a people longing for a future where the borders might dissolve like sugar in warm tea. For now, the beekeepers of South Korea’s borderlands keep watch, tending their hives in a place where past and present collide, where peace feels as fragile as a bee’s wing, but just as persistent.
