{"id":183449,"date":"2026-10-10T05:00:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T05:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/183449\/"},"modified":"2026-10-10T05:00:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T05:00:16","slug":"seoul-pyongyang-mine-dispute-spills-into-new-york-as-u-s-visa-falters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/183449\/","title":{"rendered":"Seoul-Pyongyang Mine Dispute Spills Into New York as U.S. Visa Falters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Rep.Rep. Jung Chung-rae of the National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee, a former leader of the Democratic Party. In a Facebook post on the 8th, Jung said, “I had planned to take part in the parliamentary audit as a member of the Americas team, but my aide reported that my U.S. visa was ‘still under review’ at the State Department,” adding, “Unable to wait any longer in a state that was neither approval nor denial, I urgently applied to switch to the Europe team.” Jung later issued a press release explaining, “Some speculate that my participation in the 1989 sit-in occupation of the U.S. Embassy became an issue, but if that were the problem, I should not have been issued a visa for the Foreign Affairs Committee’s audit in the U.S. in 2012 either.” On the 12th, the committee will hold a joint audit of the Korean Embassy in Washington, D.C. and the consulates general in Atlanta, Chicago and Houston, and on the 13th a joint audit of the Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York and the consulates general in New York and Boston. Democratic Party Reps. Park Sung-joon and Maeng Sung-kyu, People Power Party Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Song Seok-jun, Reps. Koh Dong-jin and Kim Gunn, and independent Rep. Han Dong-hoon all received visas without issue. Yonhap News<\/p>\n

NEW YORK \u2014 A land mine planted by North Korea inside the Demilitarized Zone that seriously wounded three South Korean soldiers has spilled into the international arena, with Seoul and Pyongyang clashing at the United Nations. After the South Korean government raised the incident at the U.N. and other international bodies, North Korea pushed back hard, showing no reluctance to escalate the dispute. The interests of each party are tangled: President Donald Trump wants direct talks with leader Kim Jong-un to raise his political profile, North Korea seeks to use its claimed status as a nuclear weapons state as leverage in negotiations with Washington, and South Korea is trying to intervene more actively in Korean Peninsula affairs. Adding to the friction, a dispute over claims that National Intelligence Service Director Lee Jong-seok was denied entry to the United States, and the failure of Rep. Jung Chung-rae of the ruling Democratic Party \u2014 a member of the National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee \u2014 to obtain a U.S. visa have fueled suspicions that subtle cracks have opened in the alliance. The more the frictions among the two Koreas and the United States surface, the more South Korea’s security, trade and financial markets are likely to feel the knock-on effects.<\/p>\n

North Korean Mine in DMZ Severs Officer’s Foot; Minister’s Remark That Attack Cannot Be Confirmed Draws Fire<\/p>\n

\"UnificationUnification Minister Chung Dong-young. Yonhap News<\/p>\n

According to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, three officers from a frontline unit of the Army’s 25th Infantry Division were wounded on the 21st of last month when a mine exploded as they conducted a search operation in the DMZ along the boundary of Paju and Yeoncheon in Gyeonggi Province. Two were seriously hurt, including the search battalion commander, who lost a foot. It was the first time in 11 years that a mine blast south of the Military Demarcation Line had caused critical injuries, following the wooden-box mine incident caused by North Korean troops on Aug. 4, 2015. In that case, North Korean soldiers crossed more than 440 meters south of the MDL and buried wooden-box mines at a gate in the fence near a South Korean guard post. The explosion cost then-Staff Sgt. Ha Jae-heon both legs and then-Staff Sgt. Kim Jung-won his right leg.<\/p>\n

President Lee Jae-myung first addressed the case publicly on the 29th, eight days after it occurred, telling a Cabinet meeting at the Blue House that “the military authorities must transparently establish the facts of the case through a swift and thorough investigation, based on close cooperation with the United Nations Command.”<\/p>\n

The case erupted into controversy on the 7th during a parliamentary audit of the Ministry of Unification by the Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee, over remarks by Minister Chung Dong-young. Calling it “a regrettable accident,” Chung said “the most essential task is to end the long-running war on the Korean Peninsula and build a peace regime.” Asked by Rep. Park Chung-kwon of the People Power Party whether he agreed with the president’s characterization of the blast as an “unforeseen accident,” Chung said only that it was “a mine explosion accident.” Rep. Han Dong-hoon, an independent, criticized the minister, saying, “How can it be an unforeseen accident when the mines were buried on our military’s side?” He added that “there is no accounting demanded of North Korea, which planted mines to attack our troops and inflict injury.” Chung countered that “hostility and hatred created this,” and that “resolving that is the fundamental remedy.”<\/p>\n

The Ministry of National Defense concluded that the North’s mine-laying violated the armistice agreement, because it neutralized the buffer zone. The United Nations Command, which holds the authority to determine armistice violations, said on the 29th that its on-site investigation found a violation only in the case of a single North Korean anti-personnel mine discovered south of the MDL.<\/p>\n

As criticism of the North’s mine-laying mounted in South Korea, Kim Yo-jong, Kim Jong-un’s sister and director of the General Affairs Department of the Workers’ Party of Korea, issued a statement through the Korean Central News Agency on the 8th, mocking the situation. “The sequel to the farce unfolding alongside the self-staged clown show over the mine explosion is a spectacle too good to watch alone,” she said, adding that “inside South Korea right now, with many questions about the mine blast left unexplained, there is nothing but an endless dogfight over whether it was an accident or a provocation.”<\/p>\n

Kim Yo-jong also seized on Chung’s audit testimony that the blast “cannot yet be confirmed as an attack,” saying that “South Korean official Chung Dong-young himself confessed that it is difficult to conclude the mine explosion was a deliberate attack by our republic.” She further took issue with Seoul’s submission of a sanctions exemption request to the U.N. Security Council’s North Korea sanctions committee to provide medical equipment to the North, protesting that “the hooligans have this time abruptly staged another clown show on the theme of goodwill.” She added that “the South Korean lot recklessly spouted something in that so-called request about ‘contributing to improving essential medical services for vulnerable groups,'” calling it “an insult to our state, a mutated political provocation and a grave infringement of sovereignty that defies our national law.” In plain terms, the message was that Pyongyang was offended at being treated as a poor country with backward medical facilities.<\/p>\n

Kim Yo-jong Uses Unification Ministry’s Stance as a Shield to Mock “Dogfight”; South Korean Envoy Demands Apology for Armistice Violation<\/p>\n

\"ForeignForeign Minister Cho Hyun (front row, from left, counterclockwise), National Security Adviser Wi Sung-lac, Ambassador to the U.N. Cha Ji-hoon and National Security Office Second Deputy Director Lim Woong-soon attend the U.N. General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York on the 22nd (local time), accompanying President Lee Jae-myung. Yonhap News<\/p>\n

The South Korean government, which had appeared to take a cautious stance on the intent behind the North Korean mine, abruptly began bringing the matter before the international community. It struck a relatively firm posture, going as far as to demand an apology from Pyongyang.<\/p>\n

Cha Ji-hoon, South Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations, said in an address to the general debate of the First Committee on disarmament and international security at the 81st U.N. General Assembly, held at U.N. headquarters in New York on the 8th, that “a mine explosion occurred in the DMZ on the 21st of last month, wounding three of our soldiers.” He said “a joint on-site investigation and forensic analysis by our military and the United Nations Command confirmed that the explosion was caused by a mine deliberately planted by North Korean forces south of the Military Demarcation Line.” Cha went on to say that “this is a clear violation of the armistice agreement” and that “North Korea must halt its escalatory acts and take an apology and responsible measures.” He added, “We also urge North Korea to come to dialogue to prevent further escalation and restore trust on the Korean Peninsula,” and that “on the nuclear issue as well, we reaffirm our commitment to a peaceful and diplomatic resolution.”<\/p>\n

Cha, a former lawyer with no prior diplomatic experience, took up the post on Sept. 18 last year. He passed the bar examination in the same year as President Lee and is known to have a particularly close personal relationship with him. In 2020, when Lee was governor of Gyeonggi Province, Cha joined the defense team in his election law case and helped secure a ruling that overturned a conviction and remanded the case with a view to acquittal. That is why some have speculated that Cha’s remarks reflect the president’s own thinking. On a related note, Foreign Minister Cho Hyun told a parliamentary audit of the ministry by the Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee on the 6th that diplomatic options included the adoption of a U.N. Security Council resolution, a statement by the council president and a letter to the council president.<\/p>\n

Cha also actively conveyed to the international community the sense of crisis South Korea feels over the North’s nuclear program. “The Republic of Korea firmly maintains its commitment to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” he said, adding that “the NPT regime faces particularly serious challenges on the Korean Peninsula.” He said North Korea’s continued development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs in violation of its international obligations “poses a grave threat not only to peace on the Korean Peninsula but to the global non-proliferation regime,” and argued that “the continuing military cooperation between North Korea and Russia, in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, must also cease without delay.” He urged that “North Korea comply with the NPT and relevant Security Council resolutions and respond to our efforts to resume dialogue.”<\/p>\n

North Korea’s delegation took the unusual step of exercising its right of reply to Cha’s speech and pushed back vigorously. The North Korean representative said “the mine explosion incident mentioned by South Korea is an impure, obstructive act aimed at framing as military aggression the fortification measures in our southern border area, which are a legitimate exercise of sovereignty,” and denounced the South’s account as “nothing but a poor trick by the South Korean military to shift its own responsibility onto North Korea.” Like Kim Yo-jong, the North Korean representative again invoked Chung’s name, countering that “a South Korean official also said, in effect, that it is difficult to judge the mine explosion to be a deliberate North Korean attack.”<\/p>\n

In response, An Ji-in, a counselor at South Korea’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations, reiterated that “a joint investigation by the South Korean military and the United Nations Command, together with forensic analysis, clearly established that a mine deliberately planted by North Korea was the cause of the explosion.” The North Korean representative then described South Korea as a hostile state and declared that Pyongyang “will defend its territorial sovereignty through the thorough exercise of force, not negotiation.” On the nuclear issue, the representative insisted that it was “an unavoidable choice to protect sovereignty from U.S. nuclear threats.”<\/p>\n

North Korean Diplomats Stay for Trump’s Speech but Leave for Lee’s; Pyongyang Stresses Nuclear Status, Criticizes U.S. Nod to South Korean Submarines<\/p>\n

\"NorthNorth Korea’s Kim Yo-jong. Yonhap News<\/p>\n

Even before the mine explosion, North Korea drew attention at this year’s General Assembly for thoroughly snubbing South Korea. On the 22nd of last month, two diplomats on the North Korean delegation sat in the assembly hall for Trump’s morning speech but were absent for President Lee’s address in the afternoon. The delegation also moved from the seats assigned by the United Nations to another location farther from the South Korean delegation. The change is said to have followed a request by the North Korean delegation to the United Nations to move its seats. No reason was given, but it was read as an attempt to avoid contact with the South Korean delegation.<\/p>\n

Kim Son-gyong, North Korea’s vice foreign minister, repeated Pyongyang’s standing position in a General Assembly speech on the 28th. “We once again confirm our official position that our status as a nuclear weapons state cannot be reversed under any circumstances or by any means,” he said, calling the country’s nuclear deterrent “an absolute and irresistible force to defend sovereignty, security and peace from external aggression and threats.” He added that “the absence of physical clashes and the maintenance of safety in the Korean Peninsula region is because we possess a powerful war deterrent and thoroughly manage hostile forces’ will to use armed force,” and that the country “will remain faithful to the mission of a nuclear weapons state in strictly controlling and managing all external threats with overwhelming strength, firmly defending national sovereignty and fundamental interests, and guaranteeing regional and global peace and security.”<\/p>\n

Kim Son-gyong also criticized South Korea’s recent push to acquire nuclear-powered submarines. “The current military trend, in which the United States has approved and is actively promoting Seoul’s ambition to possess nuclear-powered submarines while relocating and deploying various assets including the latest missiles and drones to the Korean Peninsula and surrounding region, is making an already unstable regional security situation even more fragile,” he said.<\/p>\n

North Korea sent then-Foreign Minister Ri Su-yong to the General Assembly in 2014 and 2015 and then-Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho in 2016 through 2018, but halted high-level delegations after the collapse of the Hanoi summit with the United States in February 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic was a compounding factor. For the six years from 2019 through 2024, Kim Song, North Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations, delivered the General Assembly address. Pyongyang then resumed sending a senior official for the first time in seven years, dispatching Kim Son-gyong last year after Trump returned to office.<\/p>\n

With inter-Korean relations shaken by the mine issue, Washington’s diplomatic posture toward Seoul has also come under scrutiny, after Rep. Jung Chung-rae \u2014 until recently the Democratic Party’s leader \u2014 failed to obtain a U.S. visa in time. The Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee is holding a joint audit on the 12th at the South Korean Embassy in Washington, covering the embassy and the consulates general in Atlanta, Chicago and Houston, and another on the 13th at the Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York, covering the mission and the consulates general in New York and Boston. The controversy grew because Jung alone failed to secure a visa while Reps. Park Sung-joon and Maeng Sung-kyu of the Democratic Party, committee chairman Song Seok-joon and Reps. Ko Dong-jin and Kim Gunn of the People Power Party, and independent Rep. Han Dong-hoon all obtained theirs normally.<\/p>\n

Jung wrote on Facebook on the 8th that he “had planned to take part in the audit as a member of the Americas team, but received a report from an aide that the U.S. visa was still ‘under review’ at the State Department.” He said that “unable to wait any longer in a state that was neither approval nor denial, I urgently applied to switch to the Europe team.” Jung later issued a press release saying that “some speculate that my participation in the 1989 sit-in occupation of the U.S. Embassy was the problem, but if that were the issue, a visa should not have been issued for the 2012 committee audit in the United States either.” In October 2013, when he was a second-term lawmaker, Jung was also assigned to the committee’s Americas team but failed to obtain a U.S. visa.<\/p>\n

Jung Alone Lacks Visa in Time for Next Week’s Americas Audit; Claims of Spy Chief’s Entry Denial Stir Alliance Questions<\/p>\n

\"NationalNational Intelligence Service Director Lee Jong-seok. Yonhap News<\/p>\n

Jung repeatedly stressed that his visa had not been denied, trying to defuse the controversy, but the episode amplified concerns about warning signs in the alliance. On the 6th, Rep. Han Dong-hoon claimed at the Foreign Ministry audit that “I understand that around March this year, NIS Director Lee Jong-seok tried to visit the United States but was refused entry over issues such as anti-American leanings.” Foreign Minister Cho drew a line, saying “as far as I know, there is no such fact.” Asked by Han whether he was aware of reports that U.S. authorities had sent a written inquiry to Lee’s side about issues such as anti-American leanings, Cho said that “I cannot speak about intelligence matters, but that is entirely untrue.”<\/p>\n

Han went further, claiming that the U.S. side was avoiding even Unification Minister Chung. Chung had come under criticism after appearing before the committee on March 6, when he cited a briefing by Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and named Kusong in North Pyongan Province as a site of North Korean uranium enrichment facilities, in addition to the previously known locations of Yongbyon in North Pyongan Province and Kangson in Nampo. It was the first time a senior South Korean government official had publicly named Kusong as such a site. A series of reports followed that the United States had since withheld some intelligence on North Korea from Seoul.<\/p>\n

On the 7th, Han said at the Unification Ministry audit that “the NIS has effectively acknowledged my claim that Director Lee was refused entry to the United States.” The NIS immediately distributed a notice to the press, stressing that “we once again make clear that the claim regarding a U.S. refusal of entry for Director Lee is entirely untrue.”<\/p>\n

This is not the first discord in the alliance since Trump took office in January last year and Lee in June. After a large-scale leak of personal data at Coupang in November last year, lawmakers from both U.S. parties jointly accused the South Korean government of cracking down on an American company. In the process, some Republicans portrayed the Lee administration as a pro-China government. The restrictions on U.S. intelligence sharing on North Korea, triggered by Chung’s March remarks about the Kusong enrichment site, have also persisted for more than six months. At the Joint Chiefs of Staff audit on the 8th, JCS Chairman Jin Young-seung was asked whether core U.S. intelligence on the North’s nuclear program was being shared and replied that “some of it is restricted, but there is no problem in our maintaining readiness,” while adding that “it would be best for this situation to be resolved quickly.”<\/p>\n

In June, the NIS was excluded at Washington’s request from a South Korea-U.S.-Japan working group meeting on countering North Korean cyber threats held in the United States. The NIS said of the reports that “there were some misunderstandings a few months ago, but that is already in the past.” Domestic media also recently reported that U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had conveyed distrust of the NIS to Trade, Industry and Energy Minister Kim Jung-kwan.<\/p>\n

On the 30th of last month, Trump unilaterally announced at the White House that South Korea would invest in an Alaska liquefied natural gas project. There has also been no progress yet on the nuclear-powered submarines and the rights to enrich and reprocess nuclear fuel that the United States promised in November last year.<\/p>\n

How the discordant notes among the two Koreas and the United States on the international stage will affect South Korea’s national interests warrants close attention. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen, China, on Nov. 18-19 and the Group of 20 summit in Miami on Dec. 14-15 could be important turning points for the alliance and the North Korean nuclear issue. One caveat is that South Korea’s diplomatic agenda could again be crowded out at those events by a U.S.-China summit and the question of resuming talks between Washington and Pyongyang.<\/p>\n

\"Seoul-Pyongyang<\/p>\n

\u203b “Trump Stocker” is a column delivering on-the-ground reporting and analysis of U.S. markets, companies, policy, politics and diplomacy that may help investors in the era of President Donald Trump. Subscribe to receive useful news from the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rep. Jung Chung-rae of the National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee, a former leader of the Democratic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[192,88919,88921,2371,31,3239,34,88920,71560],"class_list":["post-183449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-north-korea","tag-chung-dong-young","tag-dmz-land-mine","tag-jung-chung-rae-u-s-visa","tag-kim-yo-jong","tag-korea","tag-national-intelligence-service","tag-north-korea","tag-north-korea-armistice-violation","tag-u-n-general-assembly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}