‘My daughter’s generation will also suffer’: more than 60 years after Korean war, North still digging up bombs
The tonnage of bombs dropped on North Korea was about the same as the total dropped by the US against Japan during the second world war
In the 10 years he has been digging up ordnance from the Korean war, Major Jong Il-hyon has lost five colleagues to explosions. He carries a lighter one gave him before he died. He also bears a scar on his left cheek from a bomb disposal mission gone wrong.
Sixty-four years after it ended, the war is still giving up thousands of bombs, mortars and pieces of live ammunition. Virtually all of it is American, but Jong noted that more than a dozen other countries fought on the US side, and every now and then their bombs will turn up as well.
“The experts say it will take 100 years to clean up all of the unexploded ordnance, but I think it will take much longer,” Jong said in an interview at a construction site on the outskirts of Hamhung, North Korea’s second-largest city, where workers unearthed a rusted but still potentially deadly mortar round in February.
Last October, 370 more were found in a nearby elementary school playground.
The experts say it will take 100 years to clean up all of the unexploded ordnance, but I think it will take much longer
According to Jong, his bomb squad is one of nine in North Korea, one for each province. His unit alone handled 2,900 leftover explosives – including bombs, mortars and live artillery shells – last year. He said this year they have already disposed of about 1,200.
