Sweet buzz of healing honey

Park tending to bees at a farm near the Demilitarized Zone, in Paju-si, South Korea. The heavily fortified area separating the two Koreas is home to a biodiverse landscape and a bee farm. — ©2024 The New York Times Company

CHO Seong-hoan’s father liked to say that the honeybees on his farm were lucky. Unlike typical South Koreans, they could cross into North Korea, as he had done before war divided the peninsula.

“I also really envy them,” Cho, 59, said over the drone of bees on a searing summer morning at the family farm he took over when his father died in 2022.