Oscar Daniel Jimenez Iniguez never thought he would find himself along the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) reporting for KAZU news – in fact, a few years prior, he didn’t imagine pursuing journalism at all.
This was just where he found himself however: Tongil Chon, South Korea, along one of the world’s most fortified borders.
Jimenez, a fourth-year humanities and communication (HCOMM) major at Cal State Monterey Bay (CSUMB) and staff writer at the Lutrinae traveled to South Korea for a semester abroad and while there he decided to report on Tongil Chon as an intern for NPR-affiliate KAZU, which is headquartered at CSUMB.
Although while growing up Jimenez had, “no interest in a college education,” a number of supportive teachers and family members convinced him to attend CSUMB. Unsure of his future, he chose HCOMM without thinking too much of it.
“I didn’t know it would really take me anywhere,” Jimenez said.
After his first journalism classes, however, Jimenez realized that he had a passion for storytelling. Around this time he also began to learn more about the Korean peninsula.
While he had always found the region interesting–the mysterious nature of North Korea’s “hermit kingdom” and its fraught relationship with the south–when he stumbled upon articles about Tongil Chon, his imagination was captured.
“[It’s] literally a mile away from the DMZ, this no man’s land where there are a million active landmines,” Jimenez said.
The DMZ, created at the end of the Korean War in 1953, divides North and South Korea with an approximately two and a half mile strip of land, which in addition to over 1 million landmines, has heavily armed troops on both sides and occasional outbreaks of violence.
As he learned more about the village, he was left wondering about the people who lived there and their thoughts about the prospect of reunification with the North. “The village had been reported on before, but when I was looking through the reports, I [noticed] they didn’t really focus on how the villagers felt about reunification.”
Jimenez decided; “I was like, ‘I have to go there.’”
But Jimenez’s desire to go to Korea wasn’t just about journalism. Growing up in east San Jose, a place he said is, “not regarded as a good place to live,” Jimenez felt as though it was an opportunity to better represent his hometown to the world.
“People have their misconceptions…that people coming from that part of the city aren’t the best people,” Jimenez said. “I highly disagree with that…and I’m going to represent where I come from in a different country.”
Jimenez got to do just that in August 2023, thanks to the help of KAZU’s JLab internship, and with the guidance of Emmy-nominated reporter Scott Cohn and NPR Seoul’s Anthony Kuhn.
“Obviously when I got there there was culture shock,” Jimenez said of his first days in South Korea but, with the help of local translators, Jimenez was granted access to Tongil Chon. Initially, Jimenez recalls being, “incredibly nervous that something would happen.”
Despite being so close to the perilous DMZ, he found that the villagers, “were so nonchalant about living in what is perceived to be such a dangerous area.”
“When we talked to them, they were like, ‘yeah, there are landmines…sometimes they explode on people’s fields and it’s very dangerous. But this is a peaceful village…This is just the life we live.’”
After countless interviews, Jimenez’s time in Korea resulted in a two-part radio series broadcast on KAZU, which documented the perspectives of local villagers and their thoughts about reunification. The series also compared the experiences of small farmers along the DMZ with those of farmers in the Salinas Valley.
To Jimenez, producing the series felt like, “a full circle moment,” requiring, “everything that I’d learned about journalism.”
“Journalism is such a beautiful form of storytelling–you get to tell people’s stories about their lives and experiences.”
Jimenez plans to continue improving his storytelling skills, applying to graduate school in Seoul in hopes of becoming a foreign correspondent.