(LEAD) DMZ-explosion

▲ This file photo shows North Korea as seen from the border city of Paju, north of Seoul, on Sept. 8, 2026. (Yonhap)

(ATTN: UPDATES with details throughout; CHANGES photo)

SEOUL, Sept. 21 (Yonhap) -- Three military officers were injured Monday in an unidentified explosion during a search operation at the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.

The explosion occurred south of the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) in the western sector of the DMZ earlier in the day, according to the JCS.

The military did not specify, but the accident is suspected to be a landmine explosion. It was not immediately known whether the landmine that went off was planted by North Korean troops or by the South Korean military.

Two of the injured officers were transported via an emergency helicopter to a hospital and are being treated for their injuries.

Other soldiers involved in the operation, including another officer who sustained injuries, will also be escorted to the hospital for a medical checkup.

Authorities said they plan to investigate the cause of the explosion.

The military is looking into the chance that an unidentified landmine went off during a DMZ route clearance operation or the possibility that North Korean landmines, swept by the recent torrential rains, might have exploded.

After North Korean leader Kim Jong-un declared inter-Korean ties as those between "two states hostile to each other" in late 2023, the North has been fortifying the border since April 2024 by reinforcing barbed wire fences, planting mines and erecting anti-tank barriers along the MDL.

The JCS earlier said it has identified some terrain changes in some parts south of the MDL and was in consultations with the United Nations Command (UNC) over the possibility that North Korean troops may have planted landmines.

The latest accident marked the first explosion within the DMZ since November 2025, when a South Korean solider suffered an ankle fracture while on a mission to detect landmines.

A landmine explosion caused by North Korea occurred in August 2015.

Three wooden-box landmines, buried by North Korea, exploded on the South Korean side of the DMZ in 2015, and one staff sergeant lost both legs and the other lost one ankle during their patrol mission.

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