Soldiers Unearth Korea's Oldest Firearm in Landmine Hunt

South Korean troops sweeping a suspected minefield thought their detector had found a landmine. Instead, according to the Naju National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage, they unearthed what is now believed to be Korea's oldest firearm: a bronze hand cannon buried for roughly 600 years beneath the soil of Mount Geumseong. After nearly three years of analysis, researchers announced in October 2026 that the weapon, called the Hwangja Hwatong, could be the earliest surviving gunpowder weapon in Korean history.

A Landmine Hunt Becomes a Landmark Discovery

The discovery began in November 2023 on Mount Geumseong in southwestern South Korea. Troops sweeping a suspected minefield followed the ring of a landmine detector and dug into the ground to retrieve what they expected to be an explosive. About four inches below the surface, they found something very different: a small bronze object roughly 24 centimeters long and weighing just over one kilogram. The squad contacted experts with the National Institute of Cultural Heritage at Naju, the city in southwestern Korea nearest to the mountain.

Since 1966, Mount Geumseong has served as a strategic post for the South Korean military's air defense forces. In recent years, authorities have been removing landmines to reopen the premises for civilian hikers, a decision that inadvertently produced a landmark for military history. If the team's interpretation of the weapon's 28 engraved characters is correct, it was crafted either in 1377 or 1437, which would make it among the earliest firearms discovered in Korea's archaeological record, according to a statement by the Korea Heritage Service.

The mountain's dual identity is part of what makes the find so striking. Modern troops searching for old explosives were walking over a landscape that had been a military position for centuries before the Korean War, and they happened to step on one of the oldest weapons ever made in the country.

The Engravings Tell a 600-Year-Old Story

The most remarkable feature of Korea's oldest firearm is not its size but its inscriptions. Twenty-eight engraved characters cover the weapon. Twenty-seven appear in six columns on the handle socket, recording its name, its weight, the official in charge of production, and even the craftsman's name. A separate character on the muzzle, meaning eight, may have served as an inventory or production number.

According to reporting by ZME Science, the inscription preserves the people behind the weapon: the supervising official was An Hyu-bo, while the craftsman who cast the weapon was named Seok. Together, those details suggest that officials already organized the production of these early guns systematically. The hand cannon even recorded its own date of manufacture, though decoding it has become a puzzle for historians.

The inscription says the weapon was made in the twelfth month of a Jeongsa year, a named year in the traditional East Asian sexagenary calendar that repeats every 60 years. By comparing the inscription with historical records and the development of Korean firearms, researchers narrowed the possibilities to 1377 or 1437. In 1377, near the end of the Goryeo Dynasty, military official and inventor Choe Mu-seon persuaded the government to establish the Hwatong Dogam, an agency devoted to producing gunpowder weapons. If the cannon dates to that year, it could be a surviving object from the very beginning of state-organized firearm production in Korea. The alternative date of 1437 places it under King Sejong the Great, when Korean engineers were actively improving firearms before standardizing new designs in 1445.

Science Confirms Its Age

Researchers have not yet published these findings in a peer-reviewed journal, and the institute presented the results through an official research announcement. But the physical evidence strongly supports the weapon's antiquity. CT scans revealed a rounded powder chamber unlike later Sejong-era firearms, which incorporated wooden wads to transfer more of the gunpowder's force into the projectile. Its simpler construction therefore resembles an earlier stage of firearm engineering, before the design shifts of the mid-15th century.

Metallurgical analysis showed that the cannon makers cast it from bronze composed principally of copper, tin and lead, keeping the tin content below 10 percent of the alloy, a composition that provided both strength and ductility so the barrel would not crack under the explosive force of the gunpowder. Microscopic examination also detected impurities such as sulfur, silicon and silver left behind during the refining process. According to the research team, these traces reflect the limitations of historical metal-refining techniques and provide additional evidence that the firearm was produced using traditional bronze-casting methods rather than being a modern reproduction.

The dating uncertainty does not change the artifact's importance. Previously, the earliest nationally designated Korean firearm with a securely inscribed manufacturing year was a Cheonja Chongtong from 1555, according to reporting by Kyunghyang Shinmun. If the Hwangja Hwatong dates to 1437, it pushes that physical record back 118 years. If it was made in 1377, the gap grows to 178 years. Two other apparently early small cannons are housed at the Kyung Hee University Museum, but because no one recorded their original findspots, researchers cannot date them securely, which makes the new find with its documented discovery location especially valuable.

This is an extraordinary discovery with immense academic, historical and cultural value, said Cho Mi-soon, director of the Naju institute, during a press briefing at the National Palace Museum of Korea. It comes from a crucial transitional period between the late Goryeo and early Joseon dynasties, when physical artifacts of firearms are exceptionally rare. The weapon is now on public display at the National Palace Museum of Korea in Seoul as part of a special exhibition of newly discovered artifacts running from September 23 to November 22, 2026. The institute plans to compare the weapon with additional historical material to determine its exact manufacturing year and intends to seek treasure status for the artifact, according to Gizmodo's reporting.

Sources: ZME Science on the discovery and dating analysis and Gizmodo on the Korea Heritage Service findings.