DMZ: Life Under the Shadow of a Gun

Book Design / Transmedia



Special thanks to:
Brad Bartlett (instructor) 

DMZ: Life Under the Shadow of a Gun is a research-based book about the Demilitarized Zone in Korea. DMZ is a border barrier that divides the Korean Peninsula roughly in half. The DMZ is 250 kilometers (160 miles) long and about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) wide. For a long time, the DMZ has been a place of conflict and hostility. However, my goal for this book suggests that DMZ is now a place filled with a lot of peace-building potential, where all kinds of life can thrive.

The DMZ is a liminal space with rich biodiversity that may play an essential role in the two Koreas' peace-building process. It may heal the relationship between them like nature can heal itself.

The book's visual elements are inspired by the marks in the outlined map of DMZ and the barbed wire around DMZ.

In the beginning, the landscapes invite the readers into the book. We only see the landscapes through the binocular because we can only see them from a distance.

I used typography to provide insight into the contested space dividing North and South Korea. In one double-page spread, I require the reader to hold the book on its side to get the entire message. The page break becomes a metaphor for the 38th Parallel that divides North and South Korea, while the map is made up of typographic stars that appear to represent barbed wire.

Throughout the book, I also used the book's gutter as metaphor of DMZ, so I empty the gutter in text and quote pages.

In this spread, instead of empty out the gutter, I add tip-in pages filled it with the list of rare plants that lives in the DMZ to emphasize that a lot of rare plants could flourish inside DMZ due to human absences.

This is the page between two seasons, which means two chapters. The diagram of the two circles symbolizes the edge effect that occurs in DMZ. In ecology, edge effects are changes in population or community structures at the boundary of two or more habitats.

The third chapter narrates the art of DMZ. The artists can imagine the forbidden place and create new thesis and art about DMZ.

The last section is about the social ecology of DMZ. This section narrates that DMZ is a liminal space between North and South Korea, and DMZ's rich biodiversity may play an important role in the peace-building process between the two Koreas. DMZ may heal the relationship between them like nature heals itself. The gutter with gradient green symbolizes that DMZ is a liminal space.