South Korean Flood Waters Churn Up Landmines

After weeks of torrential rain, a landslide has slammed into an arms depot in South Korea, sending weapons and landmines toward Seoul.

The military said they have recovered most of the guns, but are still looking for about 10 mines. Landmines were planted in the mountains surrounded Seoul in the 1950s to protect the city from a North Korean invasion. While most were removed ten years ago, there are still about a dozen in the area.

Additionally, North Korean mines were dislodged from the earth near the Demilitarized Zone. Two mine boxes were discovered on the South Korean side of the DMZ, but they were empty and authorities fear that the explosives have been washed south.

Last year, a North Korean mine unearthed by rainfall killed one South Korean and injured another.

The flooding in South Korea has left at least 50 people dead, half of them in the last two days, and dozens are missing.

A flash flood around midnight on Tuesday in Chuncheon destroyed cabins at a summer camp, burying and killing 13 people, mostly university students. Rescuers saved 20 others from the camp, as well as motels and restaurants in the surrounding area.

"I heard this terrible rumble," the national news agency Yonhap quoted a 57-year-old survivor of the Chuncheon mudslide as saying.

"I woke up others and we rushed out. In a split second, our motel was under the mud."

"I heard university students yelling 'Help me!' and saw some of them crawling out, coated in mud."

Additionally, 16 people were killed when a mudslide collided with an apartment building in a Seoul suburb, according to South Korea's National Emergency Management Agency.