“From 10 p.m. (10:30 p.m., South Korean time) on February 11, (the North) will seal off the industrial park and nearby military demarcation line, shut the western overland route and declare the park as a military off-limit zone”.
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North Korea on Thursday vowed to immediately deport all South Korean nationals and freeze all South Korean assets at a jointly run factory park in the North, a swift, aggressive response to the South Korean decision to suspend operations at the former symbol of inter-Korean cooperation.
Seeking to derail North Korea’s drive for nuclear weapons, Republican and Democratic senators set aside their partisan differences Wednesday to unanimously pass legislation aimed at starving Pyongyang of the money it needs to build an atomic arsenal.
That assessment is based on Pyongyang’s efforts to manufacture nuclear-tipped missiles capable of striking the USA mainland; the technology used to launch a rocket carrying a satellite into space can be applied to fire a long-range missile.
The Defense Ministry says it can not confirm the report, which cited an unidentified military official. The North also appears to have found a way to make in-course corrections because the object initially was tumbling but now has stabilized, USA officials said.
North Korea said the South’s shutdown announcement was a “dangerous declaration of war”.
In the afternoon, vice ministers of related government agencies held a meeting to discuss ways to support South Korean companies that are expected to suffer damages due to the suspension of factory operations in Gaeseong.
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.
North Korean workers were given a taste of life in the South at the complex, about 54 km (34 miles) northwest of Seoul, including snack foods like Choco Pies and toiletries that were resold as luxury items in the North.
North Korea, in a fit of anger over U.S.-South Korean military drills, pulled its workers from Kaesong for about five months in 2013.
Isolated North Korea faces mounting pressure following what it says was a satellite launch on Sunday.
Hong Soon-kyung, a North Korean defector, said that when he worked as a counselor at Pyongyang’s embassy in Bangkok during the 1990s, he imported Thai rice for his famine-stricken homeland and did business for a North Korean biometric firm, which he said was funded by a Singaporean businessman.
On Sunday, it defiantly launched a satellite-bearing rocket, a move the West sees as a cover for a ballistic missile test in violation of UN Security Council resolutions. Some South Korean snacks have become popular among North Korean workers.
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“We want to prevent commercial interests anywhere in the world from trying to help North Korea get the weapons and equipment and resources it needs in order to further its illegal weapon program”, said the committee’s top Democrat, Senator Ben Cardin.
