Mosquito War Between the Two Koreas

A l’attaque

It is not only North Korean artillery and nuclear weapons that threaten the South. There are also mosquitoes. Since August, the South Korean authorities have intensified their hunt for insects. Capture devices are particularly active on the edge of the DMZ, the demilitarized zone that runs along the border between the two Koreas. They work by emitting substances, naturally present on human skin, or carbon dioxide to attract the flies. In North Korea, malaria remains endemic, with 4,500 cases recorded between 2021 and 2022, according to the WHO. The lack of resources would prevent Pyongyang from tackling this scourge transmitted by Anopheles mosquitoes, capable of traveling up to 12 kilometers and which are proliferating with global warming.

Collateral victims

In an article in the journal Social History of Medicine (May 2016), Kim Jeong-ran, from the University of Oxford recalls that “malaria was widespread throughout much of the peninsula”. South Korea’s disease control program dates back to 1959. The means implemented have produced spectacular results and, in 1979, the WHO recognized the eradication of malaria in South Korea. It was in Paju, in the north of South Korea, that it reappeared. A soldier contracted it in 1993. Four thousand cases were reported in 2000. New measures have reduced this number to a few hundred per year. But, between 2022 and 2023, it nevertheless jumped by almost 80%, from 420 to 747. And the situation is getting worse. Since 70 cases were recorded in July 2024.

Rear base

In the absence of cooperation between the North and the South, “It is not possible to fight parasites in the DMZ,” laments Kim Dong-gun, a biologist at Sahmyook University. Established in 1953, at the end of the Korean War, this 4-kilometer-wide strip of land devoid of any human presence separates the two Koreas for 250 kilometers from east to west. From the marshy areas of the mouth of the Han River on the Yellow Sea in the west to the mountainous terrain in the east, the area represents 90,000 hectares of varied landscapes. A thousand plants, 650 species of vertebrates, reptiles and amphibians and 52 species of mammals survive there. “animals that serve as a source of blood for mosquitoes to lay their eggs,” explains Kim Hyun-woo of the South Korean Disease Control and Prevention Agency.

Front line

Faced with rising malaria cases, Seoul issued a national alert this year and called for the expansion of the mosquito-catching and monitoring network that was set up in the 1990s. In the northwest of Gyeonggi Province, Paju is on the front line. The city, separated from the North Korean municipalities of Jangpung and Kaesong by the DMZ, is home to the village of Panmunjeom, where the Korean War armistice was signed. Considered part of the “front line of the Cold War,” it has become a veritable garrison town and its residents’ freedom of movement has been severely restricted. As tensions on the peninsula eased in the 2000s, the region has experienced rapid economic growth.