Abstract

This chapter considers the hauntologies of the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) through shared conversation, or what we call “theory chats” around Eleana Kim’s provocative ethnographical text, Making Peace with Nature: Ecological Encounters Along the Korean DMZ. We come to this project with a shared interest in not only the DMZ itself (An, S., Social Studies and the Young Learner 33:24–32, 2021), but the larger hauntological questions raised for the field of social studies education (and beyond). The chapter considers the questions the DMZ raises about how we live with ghosts in wars still raging across endless material and temporal contexts as well as in refugee and diasporic populations and texts.