A red triangle sign warning of a landmine

A land mine warning sign near the Demilitarised Zone which separates military forces on the Korean Peninsula (Brendan Trembath/DVIDS)

Almost a million extra mines on the DMZ – and it’s not about war

North Korea’s buildup along the DMZ is designed to entrench sovereignty, not launch an attack.

Gabriela Bernal

30 October 20264 min read

The past several weeks have produced an unusual concentration of incidents along the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), prompting renewed concern about the risk of escalation on the Korean Peninsula.

The South Korean military concluded that the mine explosions of 21 September – injuring three South Korean soldiers – were caused by devices that North Korean forces planted south of the Military Demarcation Line (MDL). The United Nations Command (UNC) has likewise judged the blast to be a violation of the 1953 Armistice Agreement.

Pyongyang has since announced (Opens in new window) that it will resume loudspeaker broadcasts, denounced Seoul’s investigation as a “fabrication” in a letter (Opens in new window) to the UN Security Council, and positioned (Opens in new window) self-propelled howitzers, visible from South Korean observation posts, with their barrels pointing south.

While some observers have read these developments as preparations for an attack, a closer examination suggests that North Korea is pursuing a different objective, namely the transformation of the DMZ from an Armistice-era buffer into a hardened frontier that marks the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as a sovereign state entirely separate from the Republic of Korea.

What appears to be a North Korean self-propelled howitzer on the North side of the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) dividing the two Koreas, seen from a South Korean observation deck at Aegibong Peace Ecopark in Gimpo on 27 October 2026 (Jung Yeon-je/AFP via Getty Images)

The available evidence weighs against the interpretation of imminent hostilities. Experts have noted (Opens in new window) that the vegetation surrounding the blast site indicates the mine was laid some time ago, and that it was placed in an area South Korean soldiers do not routinely patrol, which undermines the claim that it was intended to inflict casualties on ROK personnel. Similarly, the South Korean military’s assessment (Opens in new window) that the newly deployed howitzers belong to an older system point to a demonstration of force rather than the opening moves of an offensive.

These incidents are also better understood as part of a broader fortification effort: according to the South Korean military, North Korea has laid (Opens in new window) some 960,000 mines along the DMZ since 2024, also clearing vegetation to create barren buffer strips, building walls, barbed-wire fences and tactical roads, while severing (Opens in new window) rail and road links between the two Koreas.

This fortification campaign cannot be separated from the doctrinal shift that has redefined North Korea’s approach to the South. Since Pyongyang abandoned the goal of unification in 2023 and recast inter-Korean relations as those between “two hostile states,” the border has grown steadily more volatile.

Although an attack appears unlikely, the risk of unintended clashes is nonetheless rising, largely because the mechanisms that once sustained the Armistice are eroding.

Pyongyang’s 2026 constitutional amendment (Opens in new window), which defines North Korean territory as bordered by China and Russia to the north and by South Korea to the south, codified this change in law and placed sovereignty, rather than unification, at the centre of national priorities. Seen in this light, the militarisation of the DMZ is the physical expression of a legal and ideological project intended to make the separation of the two Koreas permanent.

Although an attack appears unlikely, the risk of unintended clashes is nonetheless rising, largely because the mechanisms that once sustained the Armistice are eroding. Most of the markers delineating the MDL have disappeared (Opens in new window), and the two Koreas possess no mutually agreed datasets to establish its precise location, a problem Seoul has repeatedly sought to address by requesting (Opens in new window) Pyongyang’s cooperation.

The resulting ambiguity helps explain why North Korean soldiers reportedly (Opens in new window) crossed the MDL around 50 times between August and September alone, each of which Seoul regards as an Armistice violation. In this environment, live-fire exercises, the return of loudspeaker broadcasts or a tit-for-tat response from the South could readily trigger escalation. The Lee government, having made the suspension of its own broadcasts a signature de-escalatory measure (Opens in new window) at the start of its time in office is likely to hesitate to restart them.

Seoul can instead reinforce its security through measures that need not be escalatory, such as expanding guard posts, deploying additional patrols and conducting mine-clearing operations with robotic systems.

In the near term, the DMZ is likely to become progressively more militarised – driven not by a North Korean desire for war but by Pyongyang’s determination to give on-the-ground substance to its emphasis on sovereignty and separateness from the South.

The Armistice remains indispensable for preventing the outbreak of conflict, yet its provisions are becoming harder to implement in the absence of communication between the two sides, which makes the restoration of military hotlines more urgent than at any point in recent years. Reviving such channels, however, may require Seoul to signal that it respects the North’s borders, a gesture that would amount to de facto acceptance of the DPRK as a separate state and would sit uneasily with Article 3 of the ROK Constitution, which still claims sovereignty over the entire peninsula.

As such, a sustainable reduction of tensions along the border may ultimately depend on South Korea undertaking legal changes of its own to redefine how it understands its territory – a task that has long lacked (Opens in new window) political will and support across (Opens in new window) party lines.

In practice, however, Seoul’s responsibility is to protect its direct constituents, and if that means revising legal principles that result in more insecurity than strength, the issue must be carefully and seriously considered sooner rather than later.

About the author

Gabriela Bernal

Dr Gabriela Bernal is a Korean affairs analyst based in Seoul, South Korea, and a Non-Resident Fellow at the European Centre for North Korean Studies.

Topics

North Korea South Korea Conflict & war