North Korean leader Kim Jong Un continues to order his military to mine the Demilitarized Zone, despite injuries and deaths from accidental explosions, the South said on Wednesday.
South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said at least 10 accidents leading to "multiple casualties" have been detected in the northern DMZ, the 160-mile buffer zones either side of the de facto inter-Korean border, known as the Military Demarcation Line.
The moves are part of Kim's plans to fortify the entire border area and sever all physical connections to the South, which he declared Pyongyang's "principal enemy" earlier this year.
Officials in Seoul said that his regime's forces were suffering the consequences while toiling away in the heat for 12 to 13 hours a day without holidays or shift changes.
Kim's workers, which included mobilized female soldiers, were sleeping on site in makeshift tents, according to the Yonhap News Agency, which said South Korea was preparing for possible defections from the North due to the poor working conditions.
A day earlier, Kim's powerful sister, Kim Yo Yong, said South Korea would "pay a terrible price" for failing to stop rights activists from sending anti-North leaflets across the border. Authorities in the South have been reluctant to intervene.
North Korea's embassy in Beijing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a meeting with senior military officials on Wednesday, South Korea defense chief Shin Won-sik said the country faced a complex crisis, with heavy rains adding to the unpredictability in the border area, the Defense Ministry said in a separate news release.
Downpours forecast this week for parts of North Korea could sweep some of the tens of thousands of land mines into the South, officials said.
"North Korea tends to randomly place them without relevant safety measures," Yonhap quoted a Joint Chiefs of Staff official as saying. "Whether it occurs intentionally or naturally due to heavy rains, there is a higher possibility of the land mines flowing down."
The South Korean Defense Ministry has urged members of the public not to touch suspicious items, including suspected land mines, which have been found to resemble leaves.
North Korean troops have been spotted working in large numbers in the DMZ since spring, installing mines and building fortifications including anti-tank barriers, a row of obstacles that reached 1.5 miles in a month.
South Korean soldiers posted to the border have occasionally fired warning shots after North Korean troops accidentally strayed across the MDL into the southern end of the DMZ amid attempts to block all entry and exit points.
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