Policy

The Republic of Korea (South Korea) has not acceded to the Mine Ban Treaty. It continues to insist on the military necessity of antipersonnel mines, while acknowledging their negative humanitarian impact.

On 2 December 2014, South Korea abstained from voting on UN General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 69/34 calling for the universalization and full implementation of the Mine Ban Treaty, as it has in previous years. South Korea has stated for many years that the security situation on the Korean Peninsula prohibits it from acceding to the treaty.[1]

South Korea has never sent an observer delegation to a meeting of States Parties to the Mine Ban Treaty, including in 2014. Its last attendance at an intersessional Standing Committee meeting was in 2008. However, South Korea did attend the Bangkok Symposium on Enhancing Cooperation & Assistance in June 2013.

In April 2011, Prince Mired Raad Al Hussein, the Special Envoy on Universalization for the Mine Ban Treaty, visited South Korea where he met with the Deputy Minister for Policy of the Ministry of National Defense, the Deputy Minister of Multilateral and Global Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Chief of the High Court of the Korean Armed Forces to explore ways that South Korea may wish to engage in the work of the treaty.[2]

On 23 September 2014, Korea’s key military ally, the United States (US), announced a new policy committing not to use antipersonnel landmines outside of the Korean Peninsula. Additionally, the US President commented, “We’re going to continue to work to find ways that would allow us to ultimately comply fully and accede to the Ottawa Convention.” The US Campaign to Ban Landmines (USCBL) chair Human Rights Watch welcomed the landmine policy measures as “an important acknowledgement that the Mine Ban Treaty provides the best framework for eradicating antipersonnel mines” but found “the US needs to get past the exception permitting landmine use on the Korean Peninsula and join the treaty.” A New York Times editorial on the policy observed, “the Pentagon could easily draw up plans for South Korea that exclude American landmines.”[3]

The Korean Campaign to Ban Landmines/Peace Sharing Association (KCBL/PSA) has been championing a national law for compensation for civilian landmine victims since 2001. Eleven years after it was first submitted for vote to the National Assembly, the Special Act on Landmine Victim Assistance was passed by the South Korean Congress on 30 September 2014. The Special Act stipulates that those who fall victim to landmines and the family members of those killed by the weapon and designated as their heirs will receive compensation. Since September 2015, KCBL/PSA is campaigning for fair implementation of the law.[4]

As of October 2015, the draft of the Act on Demining Business by Private Organizations was also pending in the Committee on National Defense in the National Assembly. The draft was submitted to the National Assembly by the Ministry of National Defense in its former session and by a parliamentarian in the current session, and in 2014, Korea reported that the draft was “undergoing inspection on Subcommittee for Law Inspection” in the National Assembly.[5]

South Korea is not party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions. It is party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) and its Amended Protocol II on landmines. On 31 March 2015, South Korea submitted its annual CCW Amended Protocol II Article 13 report.[6]

Use, production, and transfer

South Korea alleged that in August 2015, two South Korean soldiers on patrol on the South Korean side of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) at Yeonchon, in Gyeonggi Province, were injured by newly laid antipersonnel mines. Initial news reports quoting South Korean military sources stated that the mines were not of North Korean origin.[7] The type of mine was later stated by South Korean military to be North Korean wooden box mines (PMD-6 type).[8]

North Korea issued a denial of use, stating it only used mines in self-defense.[9] At a press conference in New York on 21 August, the North Korean ambassador asserted that the South Korean military had identified the mine as an M-14 on the 4 August and then changed it to a North Korean box mine on 10 August for political purposes.[10]

The US led UN Command deployed a Special Investigation Team from the Military Armistice Commission to examine the area after the incident. The team included military officers of four countries and was observed by Swiss and Swedish members of the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission. The investigation concluded “that the North Korean People’s Army violated paragraphs 6, 7 and 8 of the Armistice Agreement by emplacing wooden box land mines along a known Republic of Korea patrol route in the southern half of the Demilitarized Zone, injuring two Republic of Korea soldiers. Additionally, the investigation determined that the devices were recently emplaced, and ruled out the possibility that these were legacy landmines which had drifted from their original placements due to rain or shifting soil.”[11]

South Korea has previously maintained that it has not used mines in many years.

South Korea remains a producer of antipersonnel mines. In 2011, a private South Korean company, Hanwha Corporation, produced 4,000 KM74 antipersonnel mines.[12] In 2007, the Hanwha Corporation produced about 10,000 self-destructing antipersonnel mines, as well as an unknown number of Claymore directional fragmentation mines.[13]

In both 2011 and 2012, Foreign Ministry officials stated that the government commissioned the development of remotely-controlled mines, which will replace antipersonnel mines, and that the newly developed mines will meet the requirements set out in the Amended Protocol II to the CCW.[14]

South Korea has stated on several occasions that it has “faithfully enforced an indefinite extension of the moratorium on the export of [antipersonnel] mines since 1997.”[15]

Stockpiling

 The precise size and composition of South Korea’s antipersonnel mine stockpile is uncertain. In 2011 and 2012, South Korean officials declined to reveal to the Monitor the size of South Korea’s stockpile or the types of mines stockpiled.[16] However, South Korea said in 2006 and 2008 that its stockpile consisted of 407,800 antipersonnel mines.[17] In the past, the government stated that it held a stockpile of about 2 million antipersonnel mines.[18]

South Korea previously reported in 2011 that it had destroyed 18,464 antipersonnel mines (5,132 M14; 12,086 M16; and 1,246 M18) in the ammunition units where they were stored during 2010. The date(s) of the destruction and reason for this action were not specified.[19]

The US military keeps a substantial number of remotely-delivered, self-destructing antipersonnel mines in South Korea. In 2005, the South Korean government reported that the US held 40,000 GATOR, 10,000 Volcano, and an unknown number of MOPMS mines.[20]

For many years, the US military also stockpiled about 1.1 million M14 and M16 non-self-destructing antipersonnel mines for use in any future war in Korea, with about half the total kept in South Korea and half in the continental US.[21] Most of the US-owned mines located in South Korea have been part of the more extensive War Reserve Stocks for Allies, Korea (WRSA-K). On 30 December 2005, the US enacted a law authorizing the sale of items in the WRSA-K to South Korea during a three-year period, after which the WRSA-K program would be terminated, which occurred at the end of 2008.[22] In June 2009, the South Korean government told the Monitor, “AP [antipersonnel] mines were not included in the list of items for sale or transfer in the WRSA-K negotiations, and therefore, no AP-mines were bought or obtained.”[23] In June 2011, a Foreign Ministry official stated that South Korea safeguards a stockpile of antipersonnel mines that belongs to the US military on its territory as part of the WRSA-K program. These mines are planned to be gradually transferred out of South Korea.[24] In June 2012, a Foreign Ministry official stated that the antipersonnel mines are in ammunition storage within Secure Areas of the US Forces Korea.[25]

The law ending the program states that any items remaining in the WRSA-K at the time of termination “shall be removed, disposed of, or both by the Department of Defense.”[26] Moreover, US policy has prohibited the use of non-self-destructing antipersonnel mines in South Korea since 2010. According to documents released under a Freedom of Information Act request by the Monitor in 2013, the WRSA-K stockpile included 480,267 M-14 antipersonnel mines and 83,319 M-16 antipersonnel mines.[27] The US has previously destroyed all non-self-destructing mines not dedicated for potential use in Korea. As of October 2015, the Monitor could not determine whether the US indeed maintained non-self-destructing antipersonnel mines in South Korea.