Massive Korean War-Era Bomb Discovered in Port of Pyeongtaek

South Korean construction workers on Thursday found a decades-old unexploded bomb during offshore dredging operations in Pyeongtaek.

The builders were working on the construction site of a new pier in the city of Pyeongtaek in Gyeonggi Province, which is home to a South Korean naval base and a large concentration of US troops. In July 1950, it was the site of an early battle between US and North Korean forces in the Korean War.

According to coast guard spokesman Park Se-eun, the Navy and the Air Force Explosives Task Force (EOD) was dispatched to the site after the construction manager reported the finding. The explosive weapon reportedly was diffused and transported to the nearby Suwon Air Base in less than four hours.

A South Korean military official said the 113 kg, 70 cm x 20 cm bomb was badly corroded and could be a GP-250/AN-M57 — a bomb commonly used by US forces during the Korean War. It is thought to be more than 60 years old.

The bomb will be kept at Suwon until higher headquarters makes a decision about its disposal, the official said.

A report from the Asian-Pacific Journal in 2009 said that in just three years, the United States dropped 635,000 tons of bombs on the Korean Peninsula, including 32,557 tons of napalm. The tonnage of bombs is greater than that dropped during the entire Pacific campaign of World War II and more napalm than was used during the Vietnam War.

The Korean Peninsula remains in a technical state of war because the Korean War armistice has yet to be replaced with a peace treaty.