"Pick It Up and It Explodes": Warning Issued Over Landmines Washed Down by Heavy Rains

A landmine advisory has been issued for regions near the border with North Korea.

Concerns are growing that landmines buried in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) could be swept downstream as heavy downpours recently caused water levels in the Imjin River to rise sharply.

Between July 20 and 24, up to 290mm of rain poured across Yeoncheon and Paju in Gyeonggi Province.

Combined with the discharge from North Korea's Hwanggang Dam, the water level at Pilseung Bridge on the Imjin River surged to 10.2 meters on the afternoon of July 21.

This figure comes close to the 12-meter threshold for a crisis response advisory, marking the second-highest level recorded since August 2020.

The concern is that landmines buried inside the DMZ may wash down along with these swollen currents.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff stated that they recently detected signs of some lost landmines exploding north of the Military Demarcation Line, noting a high possibility that they could flow southward through shared rivers.

[Chang Do-young, Public Affairs Director for the Joint Chiefs of Staff: There is a very high possibility that lost landmines could flow into our region through southern shared rivers, and an explosion of a lost landmine could cause massive damage.]

Special caution is required for two types of landmines that do not look dangerous on the outside.

The wooden-box landmine, roughly the size of a restaurant wooden chopstick container, contains about 70 grams of explosives, which is more than three times the explosive power of an anti-personnel landmine.

After first being discovered in civilian areas of Ganghwa Island in 2010, they have been found near bodies of water in border regions every year. In August of that year, a man in his 40s returning home from fishing in Yeoncheon was killed when he picked up one of these landmines, triggering an explosion.

The leaf-shaped landmine, about the size of a mobile phone, first appeared in 2024. Military authorities estimate that North Korea floated them downstream using heavy rains in retaliation against anti-Pyongyang leaflets.

It contains about 40 grams of explosives, packing a destructive force between that of an anti-personnel landmine and a wooden-box landmine.

The possibility that small landmines buried south of the Military Demarcation Line may have washed away cannot be ruled out either.

In 2020, an anti-personnel landmine was discovered at a park along the Han River in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, and in 2021, a man in his 50s was injured when the same type of landmine exploded at the Janghang Wetland in the Han River estuary.

The Yeoncheon County office repeatedly warned of the risk of landmines washing away along rivers in border areas due to torrential rain, urging citizens not to touch any objects suspected of being washed-away landmines and to report them immediately to a military unit or dial 112.

(Reported by Sim Yeong-gu | Video by Na Hong-hee | Graphics by Lee Jung-joo | Produced by SBS Digital News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.