South Korea points finger at North over bloody mine blast
by Andrew Salmon · The Washington TimesSEOUL, South Korea — South Koreans returning to work Monday after last week’s Chuseok, or Autumn Thanksgiving, were confronted with bad news: A military investigation found that a recent explosive incident that wounded three soldiers was likely connected to North Korea.
That will be a blow to South Korean President Lee Jae-myung’s hopes of engineering dialogue with North Korea. In his speech to the U.N. last week, Mr. Lee offered his latest prescription to initiate inter-Korean talks, which downplayed denuclearization.
While Mr. Lee has constantly reached out to Pyongyang since taking office in 2025, the North has not reciprocated.
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Similarly, U.S. President Trump’s publicly stated outreaches to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un have been ignored.
Meanwhile, Mr. Lee has engaged in a surprisingly high-profile spat with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy over the fate of two North Korean troops captured by Kyiv.
South Korea’s generals accuse North Korea of DMZ blast
The latest information on a Sept. 21 explosion in the Demilitarized Zone, which severely wounded two South Korean officers and lightly wounded a third, was delivered Monday after the four-day national holiday.
The explosion was “very likely caused by a North Korean military landmine,” Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff told a media briefing.
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“Witness accounts note that a brown North Korean resin antipersonnel mine was spotted approximately one meter from the primary explosion site,” Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman Gen. Kwon Dae-won said, per Yonhap News Agency.
Plastic resin is a feature of North Korean mines. The crater shape and traces of TNT-based explosives found were also consistent with Northern mines, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
“If the final investigation concludes that the cause of the damage to our military was a landmine planted by North Korean forces … our military will take appropriate and corresponding measures,” Gen. Kwon warned.
What is not known is whether the mine was placed south of the Military Demarcation Line, or MDL, the de facto border that runs through the middle of the DMZ, by North Korean infiltrators.
Military sources have previously admitted it could have been carried there in a landslide or mudslide caused by seasonal rains.
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While massive firepower is stationed north and south of it, the actual 2.5-mile-wide DMZ is only patrolled by small foot patrols from both Koreas, with soldiers operating on their respective sides of the MDL.
Problematically, the MDL is poorly demarcated in places, and the entire area — much of it heavily overgrown, with rugged terrain — is heavily mined.
These factors force troops to stick to well-known, frequently-checked patrol routes. The troops wounded in the incident were checking one of these routes just south of the MDL when the landmine detonated.
Lee courts North Korea to no effect
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Speaking at the 80th U.N. General Assembly in New York on Wednesday, Mr. Lee apparently accepted the harsh reality that North Korea is determined to retain nuclear arms, regardless of any outside influences.
In his speech, Mr. Lee did not mention the customary demand for “CVID” — short for “Complete, Verifiable, Irreversible Denuclearization” — but shifted to a phased process.
“It is time to seek realistic and rational solutions based on a cool-headed perception that denuclearization cannot be achieved in the short term,” he told the world body.
He called, instead, for “a pragmatic and phased solution beginning with a ‘stop’ in the sophistication of nuclear and missile capabilities, going through a ‘reduction’ process and reaching ‘dismantlement.’”
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North Korean Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Kim Son-gyong, speaking after Mr. Lee on Monday, offered no indication of any agreement with Seoul’s stance, instead stating the threats it faced.
A trilateral grouping comprising Seoul, Tokyo and Washington that is “unmistakably aimed” at North Korea is “being evolved by the United States into a more offensive and aggressive military bloc with a nuclear element,” he said.
He credited that fact that no military crisis has broken out on the peninsula to possession by North Korea of “… a war deterrent in place, powerful enough to break anyone’s will to start a war of aggression.”
Hammering home an oft-made point by Pyongyang officialdom, Mr. Kim reiterated “the official position of North Korea,” as “ …a nuclear weapons state, that has been uncompromisingly and permanently fixed both physically and legally with absolutely no turning back, can never be reversed in any circumstances or by any means.”
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Pyongyang’s disinterest in talking to South Korea or the U.S., experts say, is due to North Korea being more comfortable and secure than it was in 2018-2019.
For those two years, Mr. Kim held talks with South Korean and U.S. presidents. Engagement broke down over denuclearization, initiating an ongoing period of near-total non-communication.
Currently, North Korea enjoys renewed political and diplomatic backing from China. It is also receiving massive supplies of economic and technical support, as well as work access for its laborers, from Russia, in return for Pyongyang’s assistance in the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine.
North Korea is the only nation openly supporting Russia in the conflict. It has supplied millions of rounds of artillery ammunition and tactical missiles, and has deployed ground troops.
It is unclear whether Seoul or Washington can realistically offer Mr. Kim the incentives he may seek to come to the table — acceptance of nuclear status, sanctions relief, and pathways toward diplomatic normalization and entry to the U.S.-led global trade bloc.
Separately, Mr. Lee got into a diplomatic spat with Mr. Zelenskyy, who revealed during his Wednesday address to the U.N. that he had transferred two North Korean prisoners of war, captured by his forces last year, to South Korea.
Calling the matter “disappointing” and “highly sensitive,” Mr. Lee said Mr. Zelenskyy had agreed not to disclose the personnel transfer.
Mr. Lee’s office said he aimed to shield the families of the two from judicial retaliation by Pyongyang authorities. However, Seoul’s conservative opposition has accused him of wanting to appease Pyongyang.
There is a deeper backdrop. Before becoming president, Mr. Lee had blamed NATO expansion for the Ukraine War, and Kyiv has been frustrated that Seoul, despite North Korea’s clear support for Russia, has declined to offer it military aid.
Mr. Zelenskyy shot back that the two sides had no nondisclosure agreement, and the spat continued Monday: Seoul’s Foreign Ministry summoned Kyiv’s ambassador for a dressing-down.
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Andrew Salmon
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