In August a year ago, for instance, both sides agreed to end a military standoff prompted by the wounding of South Korean soldiers in landmine blasts and the resumption of high-volume propaganda broadcasts via loudspeakers at the border to the North. This small breakthrough had led to new peace talks between the two sides, which have since broken down.
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According to the Associated Press in Seoul, some personnel were stuck in Kaesong past the deadline, however Yonhap has since reported that despite an initial delay it is believed that all remaining workers have now returned to the South.
It has become a major revenue source for the cash-strapped North, with South Korean firms paying up to €90 million in annual wages to the North Koreans.
“Dozens of South Korean trucks were already returning across the border earlier in the day, laden with goods and equipment, after the South said it was pulling out”.
“UN security council resolution 1718 requires North Korea to suspend all activities related to its ballistic missile program”.
Although there had been a rush to leave after the expulsion order came, Kang said the North Korean officials had been quite reasonable.
He said, meanwhile, that South Korea will continue strategic communication with China and Russian Federation.
In September 2014, Pyongyang drafted a new operational regulation – rejected by Seoul – that would have allowed the North to detain South Korean businessmen in Kaesong in the event of an unresolved business dispute.
Details about North Korea’s opaque government are notoriously hard for outsiders to get, even national governments, and South Korean officials have a spotty record of tracking developments in North Korea.
South Korea’s defence ministry on Thursday (February 11) presented what it said was debris from North Korea’s rocket launch last weekend.
Pyongyang also cut a military hotline and a separate communication link with South Korea located at Panmunjom, the heavily fortified truce village between the two Koreas.
In a statement, the association of South Korean companies in Kaesong denounced the government’s decision as “entirely incomprehensible and unjust”.
South Korea has joined the United States in calling for further United Nations sanctions against Pyongyang.
North Korea pulled its workers from Kaesong for about five months in 2013, angered by U.S.-South Korean military drills.
Kim Ki-hang, 53, a senior manager with a South Korean company operating at Kaesong, says the government didn’t give the companies enough time. The bill would also impose sanctions on anyone who enables human rights abuses and censorship in North Korea, sells weapons to North Korea, engages in money laundering or narcotics trafficking, or imports luxury goods into North Korea.
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Anti-North Korean activists burn placards showing North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un as they protest the latest nuclear test and rocket launch by Pyongyang. Opened in 2004 as a symbol of inter-Korean reconciliation, the project had until now proved remarkably immune to the regular upheavals in North-South relations.
