Police and military authorities have opened an investigation into how 14 rounds of live military rifle ammunition ended up in an emergency stairwell at an apartment complex in Gwangju. The rounds showed no signs of use and were held in a paper box. Police see little indication of any espionage-related motive and are focusing on tracing the source.
According to the Gwangju Gwangsan Police Station, a resident reported at about 7:55 a.m. on the 13th that a box of ammunition was sitting in an emergency stairwell between the first and second floors of an apartment building in Dosan-dong, Gwangsan District, Gwangju. A joint police and military investigation team collected 14 rounds of 5.56 mm ammunition at the scene. The rounds are used in the M16 rifle, which is no longer in production.
The investigation found the rounds intact with no signs of having been fired. They had been left in the stairwell for several days before the report, and the resident who first found them handed them to a security guard, which led to the police report. Police plan to review closed-circuit television footage from around the apartment complex to determine exactly how the rounds got there. Military authorities are also tracing how the ammunition made its way into a civilian area.
