North Korea has laid roughly 960,000 land mines along its frontier with South Korea since 2024, South Korean lawmakers told the Yonhap News Agency on October 23.
The figure, which the South Korean military submitted to the National Assembly, gives a measure of how far Pyongyang has gone to harden the border since leader Kim Jong-un redefined ties with Seoul in late 2023. Kim described the two Koreas as "two states hostile to each other", and the mine-laying is regarded as part of the fortification drive that followed his "two hostile states" policy, Yonhap reported.
Lawmakers on parliament's intelligence and defence committees relayed the estimate.
South Korean forces have observed growing activity by North Korean troops putting up barbed-wire fencing, burying mines and building anti-tank obstacles along the Military Demarcation Line (MDL). The line runs through the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separates the two countries.
North Korean soldiers have repeatedly approached or crossed the MDL. The South's military has responded with warning broadcasts or warning shots under its operational rules.
Friction along the frontier rose after a mine exploded on September 21, wounding three South Korean soldiers. Seoul's investigation found that North Korean antipersonnel mines caused the blast and concluded that Pyongyang was responsible.
North Korea has strongly rejected the finding and accused the South of rigging the investigation to blame it. Pyongyang has also threatened to restart loudspeaker broadcasts aimed at Seoul and to station tactical weapons near the border.
Some military experts put the total number of mines in the DMZ, including those laid by South Korean troops, at more than 2mn. Unification Minister Chung Dong-young gave a comparable figure at a parliamentary audit earlier in October.
On October 22, North Korean soldiers were photographed from South Korea's western border island of Ganghwa as they carried out what appeared to be construction of tactical roads and fences near the border.