The United Nations Command says North Korea has been laying new landmines on its side of its heavily fortified border with South Korea.

North Korean soldiers have been spotted planting anti-personnel mines on its side of the so-called Bridge of No Return, a river crossing near the border truce village of Panmunjom.

The U.N. Command, which oversees the cease-fire that ended the 1950-53 Korean War, condemned Pyongyang in a statement released Tuesday, saying it “seriously jeopardizes the safety of people on both sides” of the Demilitarized Zone.

 

 

North Korea has been blamed for planting landmines along the DMZ that detonated last year, maiming two South Korean soldiers patrolling the border.

The U.S.-led command would not speculate on why North Korea is taking such action, but South Korea’s Yonhap news agency says it was told by a government source that the mines are there to prevent front-line North Korean troops from defecting.

Tensions on the Korean peninsula have worsened in recent months, with North Korea enduring harsh U.N. sanctions over a series of tests of its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

North Korea’s military issued an angry statement Monday as South Korea and the United States kicked off an annual two-week military exercise, pledging to turn Seoul and Washington “into a heap of ashes through a Korean-style preemptive nuclear strike,” if North Korea’s sovereignty is threatened.

Both South Korea and the U.S. insist the exercises are purely defensive in nature.

Relations are also aggravated by the recent defection of a high-ranking diplomat, Thae Yong Ho, Pyongyang’s deputy ambassador to Britain.

South Korean President Park Guen-hye told her National Security Council on Monday that Thae’s defection was a sign of “serious cracks” in North Korea’s ruling structure.

North and South Korea technically remain in a state of war dating from the 1950-’53 civil war that ended with a truce rather than a peace treaty. [Read More]

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Source: VOA News: Economy and Finance