In its latest report, it said it believes the North’s economy grew by 1 percent in 2014 to 33.95 trillion South Korean won, or $28.5 billion, or about 2 percent of South Korea’s economy.
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The official stressed that the THAAD, if deployed in South Korea, would target North Korea alone over its growing nuclear and missile capabilities. Each earned about $160 a month – but their wages were paid to a state management company, not to them individually, leading to criticism that the project was propping up the Kim regime.
Kaesong, Pyongyang’s third biggest city, is located just 10 km north of the inter-Korean land border and some 40 km north of South Korea’s capital Seoul.
The United States, Japan and South Korea said Sunday’s launch was a ballistic missile test, and like last month’s nuclear test, a violation of United Nations resolutions.
The deported South Koreans were only allowed to bring back personal belongings, with all of finished products, materials and equipment set to be managed by a DPRK committee due to Pyongyang’s decision to freeze the South Korean assets.
Mr Wang also said China would back a UN Security Council resolution to make North Korea “pay the necessary price” for its recent rocket launch.
The ministry said Wang told Yun in a meeting on Thursday in Munich on the sidelines of global talks on Syria that deployment of the THAAD system in South Korea would “not be conducive to properly dealing with the current situation, nor to maintaining regional peace and stability”.
The statement was issued to the South only 40 minutes before the deportation deadline.
When the industrial park was closed in 2013 for 160 days, South Korean firms reported a combined loss of $870 million.
Transactions with China accounted for more than 74 percent of North Korea’s trade in 2014, and more than 90 percent when excluding trade related to the Kaesong park, according to Statistics Korea, Seoul’s official statistics agency, which analyzed the central bank data and information from trade organizations. But, generally, the complex has been seen as above the constant squabbling and occasional bloodshed between the Koreas, one of the last few bright spots in a relationship more often marked by threats of war.
She has shown a willingness to take quick action when provoked by the North. When North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test last month, for instance, she resumed anti-Pyongyang propaganda from loudspeakers along the border, despite what Seoul says was an exchange of cross-border artillery fire the last time she used the speakers.
In July 2015, the former head of the Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin told reporters that the railway was functioning after a long period of uncertainty, delivering coal from Khasan via railway to Rajin port and then via sea to South Korea.
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“We expressed very grave regret over the North’s move”. Kaesong was the last venue for regular interaction between the divided Koreas.
