IANS | 29 Apr, 2024
North Korea has installed land mines on an inter-Korean road within
the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas, a South Korean
military official said on Monday, the latest in a series of moves to
shut down cross-border roads.
The military detected the North
laying mines on the unpaved road inside the DMZ late last year near
Arrowhead Hill in Cheorwon, 85 km northeast of Seoul, Yonhap news agency
reported, citing the official.
The path was created under a 2018
inter-Korean military agreement to connect the South and the North for
joint efforts to excavate remains of those killed near the hill during
the 1950-53 Korean War.
Since late last year, the North has
installed mines on all roads between the two Koreas once seen as symbols
of inter-Korean reconciliation and cooperation.
In January, North
Korean troops were spotted installing mines on two inter-Korean roads
-- the Gyeongui road between the South's western border city of Paju and
the North's Kaesong and the Donghae road along the east coast.
Last month, the military also detected the North removing dozens of streetlights along the two roads.
The
moves came after the North's leader Kim Jong-un called for scrapping a
decades-long policy of seeking unification with South Korea and defining
their relations as those between "two states hostile to each other."
In
January, Kim gave instructions for "strict" measures to block all the
channels of inter-Korean communication along the border, such as cutting
off the Gyeongui land route to an "irretrievable level."