Documented Landmine Incidents in South Korea

About This Chart

Data Visualization Method

• Data: 108 landmine incident records for South Korea, reconstructed from publicly available records. Confirmed rows run from 1960 to 2026, within a broader research scope that begins in 1953.
• Mapped records: 67 records have a representative coordinate and appear on the map. The other 41 have no assignable coordinate and are not shown.
• Selection: A record is an incident involving a confirmed landmine explosion or casualty event. Mine discoveries, clearance operations and unexploded ordnance reports without such an event are excluded.
• Deduplication: Candidate reports were compared by date, location, victim count, circumstances and mine type. Three were merged into existing records, and eight unresolved leads were kept outside the dataset.
• Precision fields: Date precision, location precision, coordinate type and confidence (High to Low) were assigned separately for each record, so uncertainty stays visible.
• Coordinates: Every point is a representative location. Points mark either an administrative area (village, township or county) or a named place. None is classified as an exact blast site, and no points were shifted or jittered.
• Chart form: An animated map on a timeline. Each incident appears as a brief layered burst at its recorded date, then remains on the map as a small blue record marker.

Creator's Note

This chart began as an attempt to map where landmine incidents have occurred in South Korea. Public records were traced case by case, identifiable locations were reconstructed, and the result is presented as the surviving record rather than a complete history of every incident.

Most points sit near the Demilitarized Zone and the Civilian Control Line, the restricted-access belt just south of it. In the author's reading, what the map leaves out matters as much as what it shows. Older incidents often survive only as totals, without a date or a place. How many of those cases can still be recovered?

Data Sources

• KCBL and Green Korea victim investigations (republished) — the main basis for reconstructing historical civilian incidents
• YTN Haean landmine investigation — case details for incidents in Haean-myeon, Yanggu
• National Law Information Center — court and administrative decisions anchoring individual incidents
• Republic of Korea Policy Briefing and National Assembly Budget Office — official records for individual incidents
• National and regional news archives — reports used to establish or corroborate individual incidents
• Ministry of National Defense victim survey (via CBS) and the 2018 Women's Peace Symposium sourcebook — aggregate figures used only to assess coverage

Every record is tied to at least one publicly available primary source. Sources range from field investigations and legal decisions to single news reports, so their level of detail varies.

Limitations

This is not a complete list of landmine incidents in South Korea. The public record grows thinner and less precise further back in time. Measured against the Ministry of National Defense victim figures, the reconstructed records cover 2.4% of reported victims for the 1960s, 6.3% for the 1970s and 19.8% for the 1980s. The absence of records for 1953–1959 means no case could be reconstructed for those years. It does not mean no incidents occurred.

Locations are representative points, not exact sites. Incidents in the same township or near the same landmark share one coordinate and overlap on the map. Dates known only to the month, season, year or a broader period are placed at a representative point within that period.

Casualty figures across the 108 records total 35 deaths and 122 injuries. These are minimum counts attached to reconstructed records, not national totals. For two incidents the casualty count is unknown and is left blank rather than recorded as zero.

What This Chart Doesn't Show

The map leaves out several groups of cases:

• The 41 records without coordinates
• Victims who appear only in aggregate figures, such as the 1,171 post-armistice victims reported through May 2021
• The eight unresolved leads
• Mine discoveries or clearance work that did not involve a recorded explosion or casualty

A dot is one reconstructed record, not every incident in that place. The number of dots is not a count of all incidents or victims.

The burst animation only marks the moment an incident occurs. Its size, brightness and colour do not represent blast radius, explosive force, casualties or mine type, and overlapping markers do not mean simultaneous events. The record marker settles after a short animation delay, so its position on the timeline approximates rather than matches the incident date.

Recent years can look busier than they were. All 23 records from 2010 onward could be mapped, compared with 44 of the 85 earlier records. Recent incidents are also easier to find online and more likely to keep a precise date and place. The data does not support a post-2010 increase: the 1990s hold the most reconstructed records of any decade.