Landmine Accidents

Accidents that cause casualties through the explosion of anti-personnel landmines or unexploded ordnance, and a representative wartime remnant problem that threatens civilians even after a conflict en

Landmine Accidents

Overview

Landmine accidents (지뢰사고) refer to incidents in which anti-personnel landmines, anti-tank landmines, and unexploded ordnance (UXO) explode or malfunction, causing loss of life and property damage. They are treated as a representative war remnant problem in that not only military damage during combat, but also damage suffered by civilians in farmland, walking paths, and around schools for decades after a conflict ends, accounts for a significant portion of the total. In South Korea, large-scale landmines have been laid in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and around the Civilian Control Line, so the risk of landmine accidents is repeatedly highlighted whenever inter-Korean tensions arise.

Main Content

Definition and Classification

Landmines are broadly divided into anti-personnel landmines (APL) and anti-tank landmines (ATL). Anti-personnel landmines are designed to amputate a person's ankle or leg or scatter fragments with a small amount of explosive, with the aim of causing serious injury and disability rather than fatal wounds. Scatterable (dispersed) landmines, buried landmines, remotely controlled landmines, and unexploded ordnance (UXO) and cluster munition remnants that remain without exploding are also classified as risk factors in the same category. Types of injury include amputations and fragment wounds from direct explosions, secondary infections, hearing loss, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Causes

The biggest cause is that the locations of landmines laid during military operations are not properly recorded or managed. If laying records are lost or coordinates are inaccurate, clearance work itself becomes dangerous. Accidents occur when this is combined with cases where landmines move from their original positions due to floods, landslides, or soil erosion; civilians enter controlled areas for cultivation, grazing, or gathering forest products; and children mistake metal objects for toys. Explosion accidents during work by demining personnel also account for a significant portion of all casualties.

International Regulation and Institutions

Through the Ottawa Convention (Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention), adopted in 1997, the international community prohibited the use, production, stockpiling, and transfer of anti-personnel landmines and stipulated obligations to clear mined areas and support victims. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), which led this convention, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997. However, countries with major military needs, such as South Korea, the United States, Russia, China, India, and Pakistan, have still not joined, and because of this, anti-personnel landmines remain a representative case of conflict between norms and security in international politics. In addition, the Geneva Conventions, Protocol II to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), and the International Mine Action Standards (IMAS) of the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) set standards for clearance, education, and marking.

Major Accident Cases

A representative case is the wooden-box landmine provocation that occurred near the southern barbed-wire fence of the DMZ in August 2015. At the time, two South Korean soldiers were seriously injured, and this became a trigger that sharply raised inter-Korean tensions. In 2018, South and North Korea removed landmines in the Joint Security Area (JSA) of Panmunjom and implemented demilitarization measures. Abroad, civilian damage was concentrated in countries that experienced civil wars and conflicts, such as Cambodia, Afghanistan, Angola, Mozambique, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and after 2022, Ukraine emerged as the world's largest landmine-contaminated area.

Damage and Social Impact

Landmine accidents destroy individuals' ability to earn a living through death and disability and push entire families into poverty. Contaminated farmland cannot be cultivated for decades, undermining the local economic base, and clearance costs and medical and rehabilitation costs remain long-term burdens on national finances. In developing countries lacking rehabilitation, prosthetic, and psychological support systems for survivors, damage tends to accumulate across generations.

Clearance Technology and Methods

Traditionally, metal detectors, mine detection dogs, and manual probing have been used, and detection using animals such as African pouched rats is also used in parallel. Mechanical methods include flail-equipped demining vehicles and armored clearance vehicles. Recently, drone aerial photography, satellite imagery, ground-penetrating radar (GPR), machine-learning-based image interpretation, and unmanned robots are being introduced, improving clearance speed and safety.

Situation in South Korea

South Korea is a non-party to the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, and large quantities of landmines are buried in the DMZ and areas south of the Civilian Control Line. Under the September 19 Inter-Korean Military Agreement of 2018, landmines were removed from the JSA and some pilot areas, but additional clearance work has effectively halted due to subsequent strained inter-Korean relations. In border areas such as Ganghwa Island, Yeoncheon, and Paju, civilian landmine damage was repeated in the past, and the military continues to manage landmine markings and control lines and to control civilian access.

Recent Trends

The biggest change in 2024–2025 is the expansion of landmine contamination caused by the war in Ukraine. A significant portion of the country is estimated to be contaminated with landmines and unexploded ordnance, and the World Bank and the United Nations predict that clearance will take decades and enormous costs. On the Korean Peninsula, the Joint Chiefs of Staff stated that in 2024, as North Korean troops resumed landmine-laying work in the DMZ area, multiple casualties occurred in explosion accidents, and in response, the South Korean military also strengthened its landmine detection and clearance capabilities and surveillance assets. Technologically, AI image analysis, drone-based landmine mapping, and autonomous clearance robots have entered the practical stage, and some countries, such as Cambodia, are pursuing the goal of becoming landmine-free by 2025. The international community is discussing victim support and expanded funding through meetings of states parties to the Ottawa Convention, and in South Korea as well, the need to expand border-area projects linking landmine clearance and excavation of remains is steadily raised.