​Old lady Lee Ki-in farms rice at Cheorwon, one of the few counties in Korea that borders both South and North Korea. One day, a dump truck came roaring into the her rice paddy and poured dirt all over her prized rice. She tried to stop the bulldozer with her fragile, bony body but her efforts were futile. Ki-in’s ‘back land’ was soon completely buried for the sake of regional development. Cheorwon-gun forcibly expropriated her land for the ‘Modern Street Themed Park Construction Project’.

Ki-in had lost her homeland to the war before. Seven decades ago, US soldiers came barging into the village during the Korean War. Worn-out US soldiers with white and black faces covered in dust told the villagers that the North Korean army was swarming down to the region, and that the villagers must flee to Seoul for just three days. The villagers had no choice but to hop onto the US soldiers’ jeeps. But after the firing stopped, the two Koreas were divided by barbed wire and hard-faced soldiers in different uniforms.

In the spring of 2021, Ki-in planted rice seedlings on a small patch of land where bulldozers roar past for development construction. No one knows if the rice seedlings will grow, ripen, and be harvested.

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