Governing Human Habitation outside the Normal Order: Architectural Mechanism of the South Korean Frontier Villages

ABSTRACT This article examines patterns of human habitation in the South Korean border following the Korean War. Focussing in Daema-ri frontier village in Cheorwon abutting the Demilitarised Zone, I analyse how architecture was used by the state as a versatile territorial mechanism for spreading and concentrating populations; its efficiency as a spatio-political device governing selected populations under a certain order desired by the state; and its contradictory role as a platform for political struggles which contests many fundamental aspects of the state prerogatives. Through my examination of Daema-ri’s spatial development – from an illegal, temporary makeshift shelter to a permanent state village – I argue that the frontier settlements, though portrayed as the state solution to emergency induced by the influx of refugees, was actually an outcome of a self-created disorder. It proposes a new analytical framework for the frontier settlements to be considered not simply as a border problem, but as an important architectural tool used by the modern state to establish a centralised system of control over its territory and population.