Amid a series of civilian damage caused by landmines, it was argued that the Ministry of Defense-led mine removal work has limitations and that the government should establish a mine removal organization at the pan-government level and speed up mine removal in accordance with the UN International Mine Behavior Standard.
The Peace Sharing Association argued at a "discussion of the actuality and countermeasures of landmine accidents" held at the National Assembly building and said management, recognition, monitoring (land release, environmental impact assessment, economic evaluation), investigation, removal, industrial safety and risk education are needed.
The United Nations International Mine Action Standards (IMAS) is a guideline introduced by the World Mine Pollution Bureau to solve the problem of mines and explosives, and recommends solving the problem through pan-ministerial cooperation, international cooperation, and private cooperation. Accordingly, Rep. Seol proposed the "Basic Act on National Mine Response (Draft)" in July last year based on the international landmine behavior standard.
Korea's mine areas are a total of 112.5Km2, including the DMZ, the civilian control line area, the southern part of the civilian control line, and the unidentified mine area, of which 80%, or 90.78Km2, are unidentified areas. There are 1,171 civilian mine victims, and 6,428 civilian victims, including explosives (non-ballistics, etc.) similar to mines. The number of mines buried is about 1.5 million in the front and 75,000 in the rear, and the Ministry of National Defense estimated that it would take about 489 years to remove the unidentified minefield.