Joint Chiefs say some guard posts lack direct line of sight to blast site; MDL baseline discrepancies add to surveillance concerns

A North Korean plastic anti-personnel land mine discovered during a joint on-site investigation by South Korean forces and the United Nations Command Military Armistice Commission on Tuesday. [Joint Chiefs of Staff]
A North Korean plastic anti-personnel land mine discovered during a joint on-site investigation by South Korean forces and the United Nations Command Military Armistice Commission on Tuesday. [Joint Chiefs of Staff]

At least four land mines believed to have been planted by North Korea during its border fortification efforts were found at the site of a land mine explosion in the Demilitarized Zone under the Army's 25th Division on the western front, military officials said Wednesday.

Defense Minister Kang Shin-chul told the National Assembly's Defense Committee on Tuesday that additional North Korean plastic anti-personnel mines found at the site had been deliberately planted, not washed there by flooding. Asked whether four mines clustered within a 4-meter diameter of the blast point could have drifted there naturally, he said the likelihood was "low." On whether the placement was intentional, he said it was presumed to be related to North Korea's border fortification efforts.

According to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, two mines detonated in the Sept. 21 incident, and soldiers reported seeing one unexploded mine as they withdrew. A joint on-site investigation by South Korean forces and the United Nations Command on Tuesday uncovered one additional mine. Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman Kwon Dae-won told the same committee session that experts at the scene assessed Wednesday that the mines had likely been in the ground for more than a year. Defense Minister Kang added that soil and roots had grown over the mines, indicating they had been there for some time.

The incident also exposed gaps in surveillance coverage. The Joint Chiefs said at a previous regular briefing that "some areas" near the blast site "are not directly observable" by guard post and general outpost monitoring equipment. They added, however, that the surveillance gaps were "entirely unrelated" to guard post withdrawals under the Sept. 19, 2018 inter-Korean military agreement, and that guard posts in the area were operating normally.

Two guard posts under the 25th Division's jurisdiction were demolished under the 2018 agreement and only temporarily restored in February 2024. The guard post nearest the blast site was among those torn down, and sources said the blast site remained out of view even after the post was rebuilt.

A former officer from the 25th Division wrote on SNS recently that the guard post near the blast site was withdrawn and destroyed under the 2018 agreement, leaving a roughly five-year surveillance gap until reconstruction began. A former search battalion commander who served in the 25th Division confirmed by phone that the account was "exactly accurate." North Korean forces were therefore able to plant mines south of the Military Demarcation Line without being detected in real time.

Discrepancies in the MDL baseline have also come to light. The Joint Chiefs said last Dec. 22 that the MDL coordinates on South Korean military maps and those used by the United Nations Command diverged by about 60 percent. A senior Joint Chiefs official told reporters that South Korea uses the World Geodetic System while North Korea uses an old Soviet-era coordinate system, and added that "the possibility cannot be ruled out" that North Korea considered the area in question to be its own territory.

The military and the United Nations Command plan to announce final investigation results after reviewing findings from the National Forensic Service and other sources.


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