Culture Ministry unveils DMZ Peace Trail logo

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism on Tuesday disclosed the logo for its DMZ Peace Trail, a trail created to promote the site near the Demilitarized Zone as a tourism destination.

The DMZ, which cuts across the middle of the peninsula, is a buffer zone between North and South Korea. It is roughly 250 kilometers long and 4 kilometers wide.

The DMZ Peace Trail includes a main 524-kilometer route that connects the county of Ganghwa, Incheon and Goseong in Gangwon Province, as well as 10 different shorter routes with different themes that reflect the local characteristics of each city that it goes through.

To create this trail, the Korean government is injecting a total of 28.6 billion won ($26.13 million) from 2019 to 2022.

The logo was created together with four other ministries -- Ministry of the Interior and Safety, Ministry of Unification, Ministry of National Defense and Ministry of Environment -- that have been working cooperatively to create and promote the trail.

“We hope to promote the trail as the one that people in the world want to walk through using its unique characteristics of the DMZ,” a representative of the relevant ministries said in a statement. “We will develop a variety of products using this ‘DMZ Peace Trail‘ logo so that it also can contribute to vitalizing the local economy.”

According to the Culture Ministry, the dove in the logo symbolizes the origin of peace, and the DMZ letters that are written in a combination of different shades of green reflect the DMZ‘s value as the treasure trove of the natural ecosystem. It also explained that Peace Trail letters were written in brown to show how the trail can comfort its visitors.

By Song Seung-hyun (ssh@heraldcorp.com)