---
title: "Seoul’s army picks its way back to a DMZ blast site, five days late"
description: "A landmine that cost a battalion commander his ankle has set South Korea’s politicians at each other’s throats"
author: "Albion Grey"
published: 2026-09-26T10:59:25.905Z
modified: 2026-09-27T00:08:13Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/seoul-s-army-picks-its-way-back-to-a-dmz-blast-site-five-day-9bbd4f
language: en
tags: ["dmz", "war", "landmine", "military", "politics", "asia"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Seoul’s army picks its way back to a DMZ blast site, five days late

*A landmine that cost a battalion commander his ankle has set South Korea’s politicians at each other’s throats*

By Albion Grey · September 26, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/seoul-s-army-picks-its-way-back-to-a-dmz-blast-site-five-day-9bbd4f

## In brief

- A suspected landmine blast near the MDL at Paju on September 21 badly hurt two soldiers and cost a battalion commander his ankle
- Five days later the Joint Chiefs and UN Command sent about 20 personnel into the DMZ to secure an approach route for a joint probe
- Independent MP Han Dong-hoon says the army refused a UN Command request for immediate site access and interviews
- Ruling and opposition parties clashed in duelling press conferences over the inquiry’s pace and a planned unit visit
- Fragments and gunpowder traces are with the National Forensic Service to establish whether the mine was Southern or Northern

It is not easy to hurry inside the demilitarised zone (DMZ). The strip between the two Koreas is among the most heavily mined ground on earth: experts believe the South Korean and American militaries planted 1m to 1.2m mines on the southern side and North Korea 800,000 to 1m on its own, [according to the Associated Press](https://apnews.com/general-news-a6da46cf967b430987d04ab6ad4a4c18). Even so, South Korea’s army has been moving conspicuously slowly. On September 26th, five days after a suspected landmine blast wounded three of its soldiers, it finally sent troops back into the zone, alongside the American-led United Nations Command (UNC), to prepare a joint investigation.

The accident happened at about 10.50am on September 21st, as a unit of the army’s 25th Division was clearing a search route near the military demarcation line at Paju, in Gyeonggi province. The presumed mine cost the search battalion’s commander his ankle; two soldiers were seriously hurt and one lightly. Kim Byung-joo, the ruling Democratic Party’s senior member of parliament’s defence committee, says the commander was rushing to help a subordinate felled by a first explosion when a second blast brought him down too.

Saturday’s foray was thorough but preliminary. The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said a party of about 20—including its deputy chief’s joint investigation task force, the secretariat of the UNC’s Military Armistice Commission, investigative agencies and operational troops—secured an approach route, assessed its safety and checked surveillance and communications. Some soldiers who had taken part in the September 21st operation volunteered to join. The JCS promised to establish the cause and “explain transparently to the public”, while pleading that the investigation’s schedule remain secret, since disclosure could endanger troops and investigators.

That has not satisfied the critics. Han Dong-hoon, an independent lawmaker, held a press conference outside the defence ministry in Yongsan to allege something sharper than slowness. The UNC’s commander, General J.B. Brunson, had ordered a swift investigation on the day of the blast, Mr Han said; on September 22nd the command’s armistice commission visited the 25th Division seeking documents, body-camera footage, interviews with the wounded and access to the site. “Our military rejected that request,” he said.

Mr Han also offered an account of the timetable that is unflattering to the army. The UNC pushed for a prompt inspection, he said, but at the South Korean military’s objection the two sides agreed on a joint probe for September 29th, after the Chuseok harvest-festival holiday; only as public suspicion and anger mounted was the date brought forward to the 27th. He couched all this as his understanding, and the JCS has not confirmed it.

The row has since occupied parliament. On the 27th the defence committee’s senior members from the two big parties held duelling press conferences, the Chosun Ilbo reported. Mr Kim, for the Democrats, announced he would visit the stricken unit on Monday the 28th, and pledged the committee would verify everything, from the joint on-site inquiry to the National Forensic Service’s appraisal of the debris. He accused the opposition People Power Party (PPP) of refusing to come along: if it clamoured for truth while shunning the place where the truth lay, he said, it was confessing that what it wanted was not truth but a stage for strife.

Mr Kim also defended the army’s caution. Sending soldiers back without adequate safety measures risked making fresh victims—the battalion commander, after all, had been downed by a second explosion. Suggestions that the weekend’s rain had washed evidence away were “superstition, not science”, he added: as early as September 22nd the military had sent the wounded men’s gear, gunpowder traces and fragments removed in surgery to the forensic service. Its findings, expected shortly, should show whether the device—which the Chosun Ilbo describes as a suspected North Korean wooden-box mine—was one of the South’s or the North’s.

The PPP is unimpressed. Lim Jong-deuk, its senior committee member, noted that lawmakers cannot enter the blast area in any case, and asked what a convoy of MPs driven to the base could possibly verify; better, he said, to hold a full committee hearing and question the facts in the National Assembly. He pointed to reports that the UNC had sought an investigation the day after the blast, and that the army—citing safety and the wounded men’s trauma—had let the joint inquiry slip past the holiday.

The danger, Mr Lim argued, cuts the other way: the response should not be to forgo the investigation but to mobilise every capability the state has to conduct it safely and fast. Caring for the injured was obviously right, he said, but no reason to postpone finding the cause; if the soldiers’ safety was the worry, send in specialists and equipment. Nor would fragment analysis alone settle the case, he added: identifying which mine exploded is a different question from who planted it, when and how. If North Korean troops had planted it directly, the delay would have given the North time to erase traces and tidy up.

Both arguments have some force. A commander who loses men to mines may reasonably hesitate before sending more down the same track, and a sealed scene guards evidence as well as secrets. But an army that answers an allied command’s request with a flat refusal, then lets five days pass before walking back up its own path, invites exactly the suspicions Mr Han is now retailing. The forensic answer will resolve only the easier of the two questions in play.

The fragments are already in a laboratory, and their verdict may come within days. Why it took so long to go and look will take rather longer to explain, and satisfy rather fewer people.

## Sources

- [군·유엔사, DMZ 지뢰 폭발 닷새 만에 현장조사 착수](https://chosun.com/politics/politics_general/2026/09/26/3YDBMCBPPJG4ZPCXZYPXVSBTMI/) — chosun.com
- [DMZ 지뢰 사고, 與野 현장 조사 놓고 충돌](https://chosun.com/politics/politics_general/2026/09/26/2TJBJ3OECVBJLKKMO376LQMXHE/) — chosun.com