Commentary on the Birds

Poet Munson (Minesweeper) presents a pensive meditation on Korean identity, centered around the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. Examining cultural representations of the DMZ, Munson contends the Korean TV series Crash Landing on You (2019–2020), in which a North Korean army captain rescues a South Korean heiress after a paragliding accident strands her in the DMZ, calls attention to the area’s “legacy as an arbitrarily conscribed disaster zone.” Elsewhere, he studies how architectural plans for a bathhouse underneath the DMZ, which were drawn up for an art contest, create “tension” with two crisscrossing spiral ramps that each side would use to descend to the communal subterranean bath. Munson, who grew up in Madison, Wis., movingly reflects on his Korean American identity while recounting his visit to the DMZ to count rare cranes, wondering if his motivation in writing this volume is to claim his Korean heritage (“This is my border, too, I’ve wanted to say”) and distance himself from the “blundering American tourists.” Though the prose is sometimes clunky (“Snow feels lexical”), Munson offers an original perspective on the dislocations and contradictions of the DMZ (arguing that it “functions as an ecological preserve that cages in [cranes, mines] as much as it cages out [humans, development]. It is at once the halt to war and the elongation of war”). Readers will find much to admire. Photos. (Oct.)