North Korea on Friday denied it was behind a series of mine blasts earlier this month that maimed two South Korean soldiers and triggered a spike in cross-border tensions.

North Korea on Friday denied it was behind a series of mine blasts earlier this month that maimed two South Korean soldiers and triggered a spike in cross-border tensions.

The powerful National Defense Commission (NDC) said South Korean accusations that its soldiers had sneaked across the border and planted the mines along a known patrol route was "absurd".

"If our army really needed to achieve a military purpose, we would have used strong firearms, not three mines," the commission said in a statement carried by the North's official KCNA news agency.

The mines were tripped by a South Korean border patrol on August 4 in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) - a buffer zone stretching two kilometers on either side of the actual frontier line dividing the two Koreas.

One soldier underwent a double leg amputation, while another lost a single leg.

An investigation by South Korea and the US-led UN Command which monitors the ceasefire that ended the 1950-53 Korean War concluded that the devices were North Korean "wooden box" mines.

It also said the mines were recently laid, ruling out the possibility that they were old units moved by shifting soil of flood waters.