SEOUL — Soldiers insert plastic pipes filled with dynamites and detonators into a field where landmines are supposed to be buried. They soon flee to a safe zone, about 300 meters away, before the plastic pipes explode.
Then, water sprinklers and compressors are mobilized to sprinkle water or air into the field, to discover unexploded landmines. Other soldiers, armed with metal detectors, are deployed to the area to ensure that there are no more unexploded landmines.
In a six-stage scheme, the military engineering troops are conducting a drill to remove landmines, at a training range in the border city of Paju. The drill has been arranged to help them obtain skills and get acclimatized before beginning their landmine clearing operation, in and around the heavily armed Demilitarized Zone that has divided the Korean peninsula for five decades, in the middle of this month.
The landmine clearing operation is a prerequisite to South Korea’s relinking of rail and road links with North Korea, which were severed in 1946 after Korea was liberated from Japanese colonial rule.
But the landmine removal may become a long and difficult job because it is unknown how many landmines, some decades old, are planted in the path crossing the DMZ.
The relinking of rail and road links on the western part of the Korean peninsula, which was agreed upon during the first South-North ministerial meeting in Seoul in late July, requires the clearing of landmines by the South Korean military, some dating back to the 1950-53 Korean War, in a border area covering 560,000 square meters — 240,000 square meters for rail construction and 320,000 square meters for road construction.
South Korean military leaders estimate the number of landmines which are believed to be scattered along the suspected 4.1-km rail and 5.1-km road sections at around 3,000. “We will deploy about 2,800 soldiers affiliated with eight battalions to remove the landmines and undertake roadbed work there,” an Army official said.
The Defense Ministry plans to complete the removal of landmines from the construction site by March next year at the latest. The complete restoration of rail and road links is scheduled for next September.
At first, the military allegedly thought that the landmine clearing wouldn’t be such an arduous task if it mobilized all its resources and accumulated adequate knowhow. But it has changed its strategy in such a direction as to import foreign landmine-removal equipment in the face of the tight schedule and parents’ mounting concern about the safety of their children in the military barracks.
“Since the dire need to clear landmines in the border has emerged, parents of the soldiers whose units were alleged to be mobilized for the operation have made a flurry of phone calls to the military, demanding that their children not be mobilized for the dangerous work,” a Defense Ministry spokesman said.
As a result, the military opted to use the six-stage removal method to clear mines only in the beginning stages of work. For landmine clearings inside the more dangerous DMZ that extends from the southern limit line to the military demarcation line, the imported equipment will be mobilized across the board.
The foreign mine-clearing equipment now under consideration include Rhino, Keiler, Mine Breaker of Germany and Avardvark MK4 of Britain. Imports of the equipment are expected to cost the Seoul government about 10 billion won.
Unofficial statistics show that more than one million anti-personnel and anti-tank landmines are planted throughout the 4 km-wide DMZ bisecting the two Koreas.
In the meantime, North Korea says it will employ 35,000 soldiers to clear landmines and restore its own severed railway link.
The two Koreas have taken several steps toward warmer relations since June, when their leaders met in Pyongyang for their first ever summit in Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital.
Seoul plans to spend about 55 billion won on laying a 12-km rail track from Munsan to the border. It will spend another 100 billion won to extend a four-lane highway along the rail track.