South Korea’s abandonment from the last tangible symbol of cooperation with North Korea was underway Thursday, a day after Seoul announced it would at least temporarily suspend operations at the Kaesong Industrial Complex.
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Some South Korean workers left the Kaesong industrial complex in the North before the North’s expulsion order, and a handful of others were seen leaving afterward, but South Korean officials didn’t know what would happen to its nationals who had not departed by Pyongyang’s 5:30 p.m. (Seoul time) deadline.
The statement said the South Korean move was a “product of Park Geun-hye’s inveterate sycophancy and abnormal confrontational hysteria kicked off by her at the prodding of the United States”.
Meanwhile, the military communication and Panmunjom hotline will also be cut off, according to the statement.
North Korean workers were given a taste of life in the South at the complex, about 54 km northwest of Seoul, including snack foods like Choco Pies and toiletries that were resold as luxury items in the North. Seoul’s Defense Ministry would only say that its military has been on high alert since the North’s nuclear test last month.
In its announcement, the North said Park is driving the “situation in the Korean Peninsula to the brink of a war”.
Operations at the inter-Korean industrial zone were thus stopped again in about two and half years after the DPRK’s withdrawal of its workers led to the suspension between April 8, 2013 and September 15, 2013.
The North further calls South’s decision to suspend activities in the area as a “declaration of war”.
The government must adhere to its policy of comprehensively resolving the issues of the Japanese abductees and North Korea’s nuclear and missile development, and deal with them tenaciously.
Although there are doubts that Japan’s sanctions will change North Korea’s mind-set, a high-ranking official of the Foreign Ministry said the measures have another objective.
South Korea’s government and private citizens have invested more than $852 million, he said.
Seoul said that North Korean workers did not report to work at Kaesong this morning.
ASEAN Urges DPRK to Comply with UN Resolutions after Rocket Launch The U.S. Senate on Wednesday unanimously passed the legislation to widen harsher sanctions on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in response to its recent nuclear test and missile launch.
North Korea has received $560 million in cash since the complex began in the early 2000s, including almost $110 million a year ago alone, Hong said. Jack Reed said that North Korea presented “an immediate and present danger to global security”, and blamed Pyongyang’s largest benefactor and trading partner, China, for failing to bring the regime into line.
Washington, Seoul and others consider the launch a banned test of missile technology.
The only exception was in 2013 during a period of heightened cross-border tensions when Pyongyang effectively shut down the zone for five months by withdrawing its 53,000 workers.
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Auto-parts supplier Jaeyoung Solutec Co. and underwear maker Good People Co., two South Korean companies with some manufacturing operations in Kaesong, slid 24% and 17%, respectively.
