SEOUL (AFP) — The border between South and North Korea remains one of the world's most heavily mined areas, with one million of the devices planted on the southern side alone, an international campaign group says.
About 970,000 mines have been placed in the southern section of the Demilitarised Zone surrounding the frontier and in an adjacent Military Control Zone, said the annual report of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, seen Tuesday.
The group, representing more than 1,400 NGOs from 90 countries, quoted Seoul government statistics as saying about 30,000 more mines had been sown in the north of Gyeonggi and Gangwon provinces below the control zone.
It said there was extensive mine-laying after the 1950-53 Korean War and in the 1960s, as well as in 1978 and 1988.
The group said North Korea admitted in 1998 that it had mined its section of the four-kilometre-wide (2.5-mile-wide) demilitarised zone.
But the communist state last year denied mines had been planted anywhere else in the country, despite indications that sections of the east and west coasts were also mined.
The heavily fortified border is often described as the world's last Cold War frontier. Some 680,000 South Korean troops plus 28,000 Americans are deployed in the South to counter the potential threat from the North's 1.1 million-member military.
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