South Korean and U.S. inspectors have detected signs of abnormalities in their joint survey of underground soil at a U.S. military base where drums of toxic chemicals were allegedly buried, a Seoul official involved in the survey said Tuesday.
The probe team conducted an investigation over the weekend at a helipad in Camp Carroll in Chilgok, some 300 kilometers southeast of Seoul, where a retired American soldier said he helped bury drums of the toxic defoliant Agent Orange in 1978.
"There was nothing special found in a magnetic survey conducted to know if any metallic substances like drums of the toxic defoliant Agent Orange are buried under the helipad," the official said, requesting not to be named. "But I understand some abnormalities were detected in the ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and resistivity surveys for measuring underground soil conditions."
The official said the probe team will be able to announce interim results in the middle of this week at the earliest.
Agent Orange, a toxic defoliant widely used during the Vietnam War, was sprayed by the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) in the 1960s around the Demilitarized Zone to thwart North Korean infiltrations. About 28,500 U.S. troops are based in South Korea under a mutual defense treaty signed during the 1950-1953 Korean War.