SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean forces fired live warning shots inside the Demilitarized Zone after a North Korean patrol earlier this week crossed the poorly defined, heavily mined border that bisects the divided peninsula. While no casualties were reported, the incident earlier this week highlights rising tensions between the two hostile states.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs revealed Tuesday that some 20 North Korean soldiers on Sunday crossed the poorly delineated “military demarcation line” (MDL), the actual frontier inside the 2.5-mile-wide DMZ. After South Korean troops broadcast loudspeaker warnings and fired warning shots, the force retreated back into the northern half of the DMZ.
While the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has taken a string of aggressive military and propaganda steps in recent months, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs said they believed this week’s crossing had been unintentional. The troops were reportedly carrying picks and axes, suggesting they may have been clearing brush and trees to provide better sight lines for patrol bases and guard posts along one of the world’s most dangerous flashpoints.
A corridor of wild, empty land, the 160-mile-long DMZ is designed to keep the two sides from each other’s throats — only infantry patrols armed with personal weapons are allowed in the area.
However, its northern and southern edges are flanked by lines of razor wire and other fortifications, and both sides have deployed heavy weaponry ready to reignite a war that technically never ended. U.S. forces no longer operate inside the DMZ with one exception: GIs assigned to a multinational unit that maintains the security of the truce village of Panmunjom.
The frayed state of North-South relations makes the peninsula especially dangerous at present. As both sides release balloons across the border and South Korea restarts military propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts, diplomatic mechanisms to ratchet down tensions have withered. A 2018 bilateral agreement, the Comprehensive Military Agreement, is dead in the water and North-South crisis hotlines are silent.
“North Korea has not been picking up phones,” said Moon Chung-in, a prominent academic who advised the three liberal Seoul administrations that engaged with North Korea. “Not the military hotlines, the direct hotline between the two leaders, the administrative hotlines in Panmunjom, the military hotlines or the intelligence agency hotlines.”
The bulk of the DMZ is rugged, wooded frontier country, dotted with millions of landmines and patrolled by infantry from both sides. South Korean and U.S. officers say patrol navigation in the DMZ must be ultra-precise: A line of markers, installed after the cease-fire that ended the 1950-53 Korean War, have not been maintained since the 1970s and have virtually disappeared.
“It is quite tranquil and full of nature — there are lots of deer and wild boar — it is almost a shame that people try to kill each other in there,” said Chun In-bum, a retired general who, as a junior officer, led patrols inside the DMZ. “It is quite peaceful, but underneath all of that are a lot of landmines and a lot of North Koreans.”
One risk is straying off patrol routes and into mined areas. Another is unintentionally crossing the MDL, originally demarcated by 1,292 yellow metal signs, with English and Korean writing on the southern-facing side, and Chinese and Korean on the northern-facing side.
“Each side had responsibility for making repairs, per the armistice, but in the early ’70s, the North Koreans quit repairing the ones they were responsible for and started shooting at our teams,” said Steve Tharp, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who today guides tours south of the DMZ.
An unpublished study by the U.N. Command Military Armistice Commission a decade ago found that 95% of the line of markers had been reclaimed by nature and no longer exist, Mr. Tharp said, and there is no way to reinstall the line of markers without agreement from both sides.
“Who is going to go out there and replace them?” Mr. Chun asked. “To replace them, you have to coordinate with the other guys, about where the exact spots need to be.”
Given the lack of any physical barriers, patrol commanders inside the DMZ rely on GPS signals, careful map navigation and close familiarity with patrol routes to ensure they don’t cross the MDL by accident, said Mr. Chun.
Patrol duty is not assigned to all troops. “We select our platoon leaders,” he said. “We only send in people that we trust.”
In 2015, South Korea fired shells into uninhabited areas of the North after it said the North fired its own guns toward Southern loudspeakers. However, U.S. troops who debriefed South Koreans who witnessed the “incoming fire” were doubtful, suggesting they had mistaken lightning for artillery impacts.
Mr. Chun, the ex-general, says the uncertain state of the DMZ remains a prime concern.
“There are hundreds of thousands of men and artillery pieces all staring down at each other,” he said. “If you guys knew the realities, you’d all be scared.”
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.
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