A rice bowl, a pair of scissors and a notebook with vehicle numbers might seem ordinary. In Lee Ye-eun’s photographs, however, they became the faces of a border village between the two Koreas. Her outdoor exhibition, “People of Baegyeon-ri,” presented as part of “DMZ Open Exhibition: Staging,” brings together belongings lent by residents of a village in Paju, Gyeonggi Province. Also known as Tongil-chon, or Unification Village, Baegyeon-ri lies just south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), within a military-controlled area where civilian access is restricted. Established in 1973 to showcase South Korean agriculture to the North, the village is defined by its unusual geopolitical position. But Lee wanted to look beyond that distinction to the people who live and work there — growing crops, preparing meals and tending flowers. “Tongil-chon sounds like somewhere very special, but Baegyeon-ri sounds like a village you might find anywhere,” she said in a recent interview with The Korea Times. “These aren’t extraordinary people. They’re ordinary people working hard to make