Three South Korean military officers injured in suspected landmine explosion during operation at DMZ

Seoul: Three military officers were injured Monday in a suspected landmine explosion during a search operation at the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.

The explosion occurred south of the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) in the western sector of the DMZ at around 10:50 am, according to JCS officials, Yonhap News Agency reported.

Of the injured, two senior military officers sustained serious wounds, including one who lost his ankle, according to military sources. None of the wounded officers was in life-threatening condition, the sources said.

The military dispatched an emergency helicopter inside the heavily fortified DMZ in coordination with the UN Command (UNC) to escort the patients, according to the sources.

Military authorities said they are investigating the cause of the accident, noting the explosion was highly likely to have been caused by a landmine.

"There was an unidentified explosion, and it appears that there is a high probability that it was a landmine explosion," a JCS official said.

It was not immediately known whether the landmine that went off was planted by North Korean troops or by the South Korean military.

Leaving "all possibilities open", the military is looking into the chance that an unidentified landmine went off during a DMZ route clearance operation or the possibility that North Korean landmines, swept by the recent torrential rains, might have exploded.

The South Korean troops were reportedly conducting operations to clear routes inside the DMZ to search for landmines and other explosives, and secure a safe path for operations, the JCS official said.

Asked why the JCS had belatedly informed the press of the accident hours after it occurred, the JCS official said the military had been focused on transporting the injured personnel to a hospital, adding that the safety of the troops comes first.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un declared inter-Korean ties as those between "two states hostile to each other" in late 2023, and the North has been fortifying the border since April 2024 by reinforcing barbed wire fences, planting mines and erecting anti-tank barriers along the MDL.

Rep. Yu Yong-weon of the main opposition People Power Party claimed Monday that the site of the explosion at the 25th Infantry Division was near an area south of the DMZ where North Korean troops were believed to have crossed the DMZ to bury landmines.

However, the JCS official dismissed the lawmaker's claim, saying the site of the blast was "distanced" from the location mentioned by Rep. Yu.

The JCS earlier said it has identified some terrain changes in some parts south of the DMZ and was in consultations with the UNC over the possibility that North Korean troops may have planted landmines.

The latest accident marked the first landmine explosion on the South Korean side of the DMZ that left a serious injury since August 2015, when three wooden-box landmines, buried by North Korea, exploded. At that time, one South Korean staff sergeant lost both legs and another lost an ankle during their patrol mission.

It was also the first blast accident within the DMZ since November 2025, when a South Korean soldier suffered an ankle fracture while on a mission to detect landmines.

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