A senior South Korean military officer, Ku Hongmo, said that Seoul believes North Korean soldiers secretly crossed the border and laid mines between July 23 and August 3, the day before the three mines exploded. Gen. Koo Hong-mo, director of operations of the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a press briefing Monday.
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An investigation by South Korea and the UN Command showed the splinters from the explosion were from wood box mines used by the North.
If it is proved that North Korea is behind the incident, it would mean a violation of the cease-fire policy that technically put an end to the Korean War.
The U.S.-led United Nations Command also conducted an investigation that blamed North Korea for the mines. Their injuries were not life-threatening, but one soldier lost both legs, one below the knee and one above the knee, and the other had a foot amputated, according to South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense.
The time difference may still cause some difficulties in inter-Korean exchanges, particularly flows of personnel and goods to and from a joint industrial park in Gaeseong north of the Demilitarized Zone.
The South Korean military needs to strengthen steps to eliminate the gaps in defense that might have enabled the North to make the latest provocation.
“It’s an unacceptable breach of the armistice terms, but you don’t want to escalate the situation so it spins out of control”. North Korea may say that the time zone change is inspired by Japanese imperialism, but it also sends a message to South Korea, which abandoned the Japanese time zone in 1954 but reverted to it in 1964 in a bid to remain in sync with U.S. forces stationed in the country. South Korea’s military said the broadcasts planned Monday are only part of its response.
Tension has flared in the past around sensitive points on the their de facto border, including North Korea’s shelling of an island in 2010 that killed two South Korean marines.
But South Korea didn’t go ahead with plans to resume loudspeaker broadcasts at the time.
Both the command and the South Korean military ruled out the possibility that the mines were old ones that had drifted from their original placements because of rain or shifting soil.
After a war of words with the US and with new UN sanctions over the third nuclear test, the country vowed to restart all nuke facilities, including a uranium enrichment facility at Yongbyon.
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“North Korea seems baffled by our side’s immediate launch of psychological warfare”, said another intelligences source, assessing North Korea’s silence.
