South Korea continues to increase its military engagement with Ukraine by providing some much needed mine clearing vehicles:
Fortunately for Ukraine, South Korean firm Hyundai produces a similar breaching vehicle: the K600. And Seoul just pledged two of the 62-ton vehicles to Kyiv. South Korea will deliver the K600s “as soon as possible,” a government source told Chosun.
Hyundai makes a two-person K600 by removing the turret from a K1 tank—a South Korean variant of the American M-1—and adding a plow, an articulated excavator arm and a device for safely triggering magnetic mines.
The K600 is compatible with two dozer blades, both made by Pearson. A wedge-shape blade works best for digging up and shoving aside buried mines. A straight blade works better for generic engineering tasks: filling in trenches, digging revetments, et cetera.
Hyundai delivered the first K600s to the South Korean army in 2020. The South Korean and Ukrainian governments began discussing a K600 transfer back in May; the South Koreans finally approved the deal this month. There’s one caveat. The Ukrainians must deploy the vehicles only in “humanitarian” roles.
The caveat is meaningless. Arguably any mineclearing operation—even one that occurs while the engineers are under enemy fire—is humanitarian.
Forbes via a reader tip
You can read more at the link.
Army soldiers use landmine detectors to search bushes along the Imjin River that runs across the inter-Korean border in the South Korean border town of Paju on July 20, 2017, for wood-box landmines that may have floated down from North Korea. The box mines are frequently found near the inter-Korean border area after summer floods cause them to wash down from North Korea. (Yonhap)
Via the Stars and Stripes comes this YouTube video which shows when the two ROK Army soldiers were hit by the planted North Korean landmine:
Here is what experts in the article had to say about detecting such infiltrations:
A South Korean military official, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, said that while South Korean troops aggressively monitor the border with advanced surveillance equipment and their naked eyes, their ability to monitor some portions of the DMZ is limited.
North and South Korean troops man outposts along the Military Demarcation Line, often in forested areas.
“It’s very difficult to keep watch there for 24 hours a day, especially if it’s rainy or foggy,” said Kim Seongmin, a defector and former North Korean military officer who now heads Free North Korea Radio. “If North Korean troops want to violate the armistice agreement, they can do it there,” he said.
An Chanil, who was stationed at the DMZ as a platoon sergeant in the North Korean army, agreed.
“Nobody can see everywhere,” said An, who defected in 1979 and is now president of the World Institute for Korea Studies, a Seoul-based think tank.
He said ordinary North Korean soldiers would have difficulty crossing the demarcation line, though specially trained reconnaissance soldiers could do so with ease.
“The DMZ is their home ground,” he said. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read more at the link, but this is why any North Korean soldiers caught violating the armistice should be shot on site. In the past warning shots were fired when they were caught crossing the DMZ. It is now time to start attriting their operatives who are specially trained for these missions. That will be a deterrent to continuing to launch such attacks.
I am sure the Kim regime is under intense pressure from China considering how North Korean soldiers have crossed the border and murdered Chinese citizens:
North Korea has been planting anti-personnel mines alongside the inter-Korean border for the past couple of months to prevent North Korean soldiers from fleeing to South Korea, a South Korean official said Sunday.
“Under the order of leader Kim Jong-un, the military has gone all-out to prevent soldiers from going AWOL across the North Korea-China border,” the official said, adding the deployment of land mines near the inter-Korean border seems to serve a similar purpose.
Last October, the two Koreas exchanged fire after troops from the communist country drew near the border. No one was hurt.
A month later, a North Korean patrol approached the land border again, prompting warning shots from South Korean troops. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link.
