Don't touch if you see one of these swept into S. Korea by monsoon

Imagine you're camping just outside Seoul and you find what looks like a wooden box. You might be curious to check it out, but we're being warned by the South Korean military to not touch such objects because they could be highly dangerous. As North Korea has called for maximum vigilance among its own people while heavy monsoon rainfall soaks the Korean peninsula, we're being urged in the South to watch out for landmines that the weather might have swept from the North to South Korea. Take a look at these images. Various types of landmines designed to blend into natural environments that North Korea is known to have planted at the border, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff here, which has warned they could be dislodged by heavy downpours and washed into South Korea via the Imjin, Hantan and Bukhan rivers. This isn't just a theoretical threat either. In 2010, a man and his nephew were returning from a fishing trip when they found two strange wooden boxes that had swept down the Imjin River. One of the boxes exploded, killing the man and leaving his nephew seriously injured. After that, the South Korean military found over 30 of these wooden box mines that had drifted into rivers and onto the shores of South Korean border islands. But since then, in 2020, another man was hurt by a landmine explosion in the Gimpo area to the west of Seoul. North Korea was expected to be hit by up to 200 millimeters of rain between Tuesday and Wednesday this week. State media called for thorough safety measures to prevent damage. But as we've seen, there's a whole other dimension of monsoon-related safety stemming from the North here in South Korea.