In October 2024, the DPRK’s defensive activity in the border zone with South Korea was visibly completed. The possibility of road and rail transportation between the two Korean states has been cut off
Some historical background
The routes were built under the Japanese and have been repeatedly blocked, then restored, and have more of a symbolic than a practical value, since, as noted by the Russian-speaking Korean scholar Andrey Lankov, “there has been no real movement for about 80 years.” The restoration of the roads and railways was seriously discussed in 2000, when the leaders of the two Koreas held their first summit. However, the traffic remained irregular, and only the Kaesong section was used, as it served a South Korean industrial complex in North Korean territory and employing North Korean workers. And after South Korea closed this industrial complex in Kaesong in 2016, the use of the route actually ceased.
The last attempt to maintain the routes occurred during the “Olympic warming.” In 2018, the two Koreas agreed to reconnect and modernize the roads and railways in an atmosphere of rapprochement and held a ceremony to mark the beginning of construction work. But “after the inconclusive summit in Hanoi between then US President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un in 2019, the project did not go ahead” and evil tongues claim that this was due not to the obstruction of the United States, but to the reluctance of the South Korean authorities to provide real assistance to the North instead of just holding ceremonial events.
According to Seoul, “the project to connect the roads and railways included 133 million US dollars in credit from South Korea, which took the form of loans of construction equipment at the request of the North,” but a number of high-profile scandals in more recent times suggest that some of the funds may have been stolen.
After Kim Jong-un described the two Koreas as two hostile states in 2023 and ordered a blockade to “irreversible levels” in January 2024, the North dismantled lighting and laid mines along its side of the roads, and deployed troops to erect what are assumed to be anti-tank barriers.
North Korea explained its activities by the growth of military activity and the United States’ deployment of strategic military hardware in South Korea.
No to roads!
On October 16, KCNA published a report “on the complete severance of roads and railways connecting the DPRK with the Republic of Korea.” As a result, 60-meter sections of road and railway have been completely blocked in the Kamho-ri (Kosong County, Kangwŏn province) and in Tongnae-ri (Panmun County, Kaesong city).
Judging by a video of the demolition work, first the concrete base of the road was blown up, and then the DPRK used heavy equipment to dig trenches. Thus, its goal is not just to destroy the roads and rail lines, but to create a system of engineering barriers after the recent restoration of minefields in these areas.
A spokesman for the DPRK’s Ministry of Land and Environmental Protection confirmed that the explosion did not have any negative impact on the environment, and that as a result of these measures, the communications routes between the DPRK and the ROK were totally severed.
Since the South Koreans knew about the impending demolition, they evacuated their military to a safe distance, so that no one was hurt. It is believed that several fragments from the explosion fell onto South Korean territory, and “in response, the military of the Republic of Korea increased vigilance” and combat readiness, and also opened return fire from K-4 rapid-fire automatic grenade launchers and K-6 large-caliber machine guns on targets installed 100 meters from the DMZ. This was purely symbolic, since the bullets did not reach North Korean territory.
The South Korean media immediately noted that the demolition was described by the DPRK as an “inevitable and legitimate measure” taken in accordance with the country’s Constitution, which defines the Republic of Korea as a “hostile state,” and that the DPRK took this step in response to serious security circumstances that pushed the situation to the brink of war due to serious political and military provocations by hostile forces.
Shortly afterwards, this explanation was confirmed by Kim Jong-un himself. During a visit to the command of the Second Corps of the Korean People’s Army, the leader of the DPRK made a number of relevant statements.
“Our army should keep in mind once again the stark fact that the Republic of Korea is a foreign country and an apparent hostile country. We completely blocked the roads and railways to the territory of the Republic of Korea two days ago through blasting. It means not only the physical closure but also the end of the evil relationship with Seoul which persistently lasted century after century…”
South Korea’s reaction and subsequent skirmishing
On October 15, South Korea’s Ministry for Unification called the blasting of the roads and rail lines a “ clear violation of an inter-Korean agreement and a very abnormal act.” Pyongyang is fully responsible for the rupture of relations and the aggravation of the situation on the Korean Peninsula, and North Korea is still obliged to pay off its construction debts.
On the same day, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller called on North Korea to stop actions that increase the risk of a military conflict on the Korean Peninsula.
The head of South Korea’s ruling party, Han Dong-hoon, said that “the connecting roads were built with 180 billion won ($132 million) of taxpayers’ precious money.”
And on October 20, North Korea accused UN Secretary-General António Guterres of “double standards,” saying that after the destruction of inter-Korean roads, he urged Pyongyang to exercise restraint, while remaining silent about the alleged infiltration of South Korean drones into the North.
To summarize
Andrey Lankov considers the explosions part of the DPRK’s campaign to destroy all symbols related to the unification of the two countries: the destruction of railways and highways which have already fallen into disuse, is a symbolic act designed to signal, both domestically and internationally, that inter-Korean relations have come to a complete end. If we consider the issue purely from a military point of view, then the territory along the DMZ will again turn into a single, continuous, fully-fledged line of defense, the first of six, thus highlighting Pyongyang’s unwillingness to initiate a conflict and, even more, to attack Seoul of its own free will.
Konstantin Asmolov, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Leading research fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of China and Modern Asia of the Russian Academy of Sciences, especially for the online journal “New Eastern Outlook”
