Land mine swept ashore from NKorea kills SKorean

Not a good idea, carrying anti-personal mines. Leave well alone, call the experts.

If they're stupid enough to pick it up they deserve to be blown up.

Another conflict after the Cheonan incident!!

Wow sad, but ppl do some crazy stuff, I mean even if they didn't know what was inside, do you just go around carrying off with things if you don't know where it came from? Don't think much will come out of this, if it is from the rain, NKorea has no hand in this, as well as to hear their is a 155 mile long border strewn with these mines!..makin sure no on crosses those borders!

Could this be NK's strong response to the recent military exercise? I thought they were just going on a hunger strike.

Could this be NK's strong response to the recent military exercise?

good question..use rain to as an excuse..who knows really it did come at an awkward moment..but would be wrong to blame without evidence.

Two men discovered two mines in wooden boxes

Why would armed mines be inside a wooden box?

These boxes were shown on TV this evening. They looked like large wooden pencil boxes, fish traps, or small tool boxes. Depress or open the lid and you're stuffed. Obviously hand-made, and not like any kind of anti-personnel mine I have seen before.

Traditional mine detectors are metal detectors, so use of non-metal containers such as wood or ceramics makes detecting them much harder. The wooden box mines may not have looked dangerous to the uninformed, so the farmers might not have been aware that they were in any danger. Any death or injury in circumstances like this is regretted.

Recalling my Army days.

Packaged ordnances are usually NOT armed and secured. Now if crated mines wash up(can happen, unlikely though), they would be in such a state.

So handling them would be safe. And the Army tends to drop and bump crates easily.

Now if a mine-field got washed out and a few mines got carried downstream, if those are dumped into a crate and carried "Boooom" is a very possible result.

Anyone with basic military training can see things don't add up here.

Wood box, pressure or trip activated land mines are a very old technology, going back as far as 14th century China, and in modern times at least to 1902 & the Russo-Japanese War. The Germans used wood box housed land mines a lot in both WW1 and WW2 as anti-personnel and anti-armor area denial. They were cheap, easy to make, effective, and as these poor sods found out, often not recognized.

North Korea is out of order, worse than bleeding Stalin their leader is. They should be starved so the revolt against their nutcase leader and stop these terrorist attacks.

I'd like to nominate the victims for the darwin awards. Picking up and carrying a mine home... Not the smartest thing you can do.

Molenir: if you have more information about the wood boxes, please give us some insights. Like for example any label on the box, etc. I won't be distributing Darwin awards too quickly.

OssanAmerica: NK messing around again. Let's wait for NK denying any wrong doing and blaming US, RoK for this.

If they blew up by carrying, then there is almost no way they would survive being washed anywhere. If you find something you believe washed up, it follows that you would assume it will survive handling. I would have been more worried it was radioactive/poisonous than explosive if I did not think it was a box of landmines.

Just a sneaky way to hit ships participating in maneuvers off of Korea. The scary thing, is if these things go out to sea, you don't know where they will end up.

Not a good idea, carrying anti-personal mines.

If they're stupid enough to pick it up they deserve to be blown up.

What sane person sees a box on a beach and assumes it's a landmine? I'm willing to wager that they probably didn't know what it was, unless the North Koreans decided to mark the boxes for saftey reasons...ha.

Why would armed mines be inside a wooden box?

Budget cuts? Lil' Kim's gotta eat after all.

ppl do some crazy stuff, I mean even if they didn't know what was inside, do you just go around carrying off with things if you don't know where it came from?

I've found some pretty cool stuff beachcombing before, me and my brother made an end table out of a stump that washed up once.

Zenny11: "Anyone with basic military training can see things don't add up here."

Stop being so dramatic. I watched Korean news last night at a friend's place who has cable (and is Korean) and the explanation made a lot of sense. They were indeed washed ashore, and were armed. The type of mine is one they have seen before, basically a mine in a wooden box. If the mine contains a kind of pin in it then some 40 or so kgs of pressure are needed on it to set it off. If there is no 'pin' in it then they need only 11 kg of pressure to go off. The boxes they were in were quite worn and had visible signs of water damage.

Why would you think mines lying along and around the NK border wouldn't be armed?

TheQuestion: "What sane person sees a box on a beach and assumes it's a landmine?"

Ummm... maybe people fishing and living near or on the border with North Korea? Okay, so I think it's a safe bet they didn't know the things they picked up were mines, but these men, who have gone through mandatory military training, should probably know better than to pick up and attempt to carry home objects they find on a beach close to the border with NK, no?

Ummm... maybe people fishing and living near or on the border with North Korea?

When you see a wooden box the first thing that comes to mind probably isn't 'that may be a washed up mine' no matter where you live. More than likely these guys probably thought it was a cargo box that either got kicked up by the storm or knocked off of a boat.

should probably know better than to pick up and attempt to carry home objects they find on a beach close to the border with NK, no?

I doubt very many people would be overly suspicious of a washed up box no matter where in the world you live. That's all I'm saying. We've all found stuff while out camping or fishing and brought it along with us for the hell of it.

Some people are still imagining 'a box of landmines', despite the clarifications in other posts.

The wooden box looks a bit like a shoe-box, and since it is a fully-rigged mine in and of itself, it would feel heavy if you picked it up.

Thought-bubble: "Mmmm... salvage! heavy! ... a bottle of whisky, maybe?"

The translation is probably misleading. Instead of Two men discovered two mines in wooden boxes floating in a river

how about: "Two men discovered two 'wood-box' mines, floating...

I am going to assume that the North Koreans use a domestically produced version of a Russian PMD mine which is housed in a wooden box.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PMD_series_mines

I can understand the fishermen, or anyone for that matter finding these and not immediuately thinking "landmine!!"

Before any one else condemns these poor guys for picking up land mines they really need to see what these things look like, and they do not look like any mine I have ever seen before. They really look like a DIY back garden job. Talk about doing a job on the cheap. Have a look and then come back and say how smart you would have been not to have picked such a thing up.

http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2924019

Thank you for the pic and article grafton. From it:

It is the first time a North Korean box mine was discovered in South Korea.

I think this thread is evidence that less than intelligent people like to use 20/20 hindsight to call other stupid in order to feel better about themselves. A wise man knows we are all fools to some degree.