By Michael Breen

Ask anyone these days what should be done with the DMZ and they will tell you it should become a conservation area.

This consensus is so strong, and central and local government backing so evident, that it has the appearance of a done deal. All we need now, it seems, is for the North Korean government to OK putting the DMZ up for UNESCO World Heritage Site designation, and we can turn it into a protected ``peace park," and the rare Asiatic black bears and red-crowned cranes can relax.

The chances of it actually happening, though, are slim.

This idea is far more likely to go the way of unification itself. Once the wish of all Koreans, unification is now so feared by southerners that, if the opportunity were to present itself unexpectedly, their leaders would look the other way. Similarly, an environmental idea that warms the heart as a distraction from the harsh and unchanging fact of enmity, may seem delusionary, unfair and therefore undesirable when the soldiers have gone.

For this plan to work, it needs to be deeply reasoned and clearly articulated. To this end, peace park proponents should guard against fuzzy ``border romance." This was the phrase used at a conference this week of the Korea DMZ Peace Forum from Bernhard Seliger, a Korea-based expert on German democracy and reunification.

There is a tendency in Korea to moan about the past and present, and to fantasize about and make grandiose plans for the future. There is also a tendency to believe that if we in South Korea can just strike the right policy and convey it with the right note the North Koreans will agree. This type of thinking by well-meaning people was apparent in the stand-off with European communism until its collapse from within 20 years ago.

Aside from being delusionary, such thinking is morally confused. Why is it that the same people who froth at the mouth over the Japanese occupation and military dictatorships roll over like puppy dogs in front of communist dictators still in power whose people have suffered more under their rule than at any other time? Engagement is the way forward but it can only work if you are very clear about the nature of who you are engaging.

As evidence of murkiness here, one conservationist at the DMZ event expressed his puzzled frustration that he had been proposing conservation ideas for the zone for 15 years, but nothing had happened. A noted scholar suggested calling the zone the ``Kim Il -sung Peace Park" to get the North Koreans interested.

We need a strong injection of common sense into this debate. The whole notion that a peace park proposal for the frontline can itself bring peace ― and not the other way round ― is questionable.

Right now, proposing to a land use plan for land shared with another country whose existence we don't acknowledge and whose land therefore is actually ours anywhere, is premature. There are some knots to be untied. We at least need a Korean War peace treaty and either, if not unification, then peace and mutual recognition between North and South Korea.

For now, we may propose other initiatives with North Korea. For now, DMZ peace park activists should focus on a plan that can work after peace and love break out.

When that time comes, and this was Seliger's other warning, ``Economics will be more important than ecology."

It's a simple point, but one that can easily get lost, especially by those who are disconnected from the business of their employer and may equate money-making with base values, and by those who prefer ideas or animals to people. What economics-first actually means is that people are our priority. In addition, planners must consider what the DMZ means to people and how that memory and meaning may be honored, preserved and presented.

The DMZ may seem devoid of humans, except for the occasional miles (Latin for soldier ― ed) coreanus, but look deeper into no-man's land and you will feel it is filled with ghosts. It lies, like a layer of human pain, across the peninsula. If a conservation plan captures that, it will work. But if it ignores it, then it will rightfully be ignored.

Michael Breen is chairman of Insight Communications Consultants and exclusive partner of FD International. He can be reached at mike.breen@insightcomms.com.