The Pentagon report also said North Korea is continuing to sell weapons to other countries, circumventing sanctions by using false documents and intermediaries. North Korea launched a rocket February 7, carrying what it said was an Earth observation satellite into space. The U.S. military already has an operating Patriot missile defense system in South Korea to counter the threat of North Korea’s shorter-range arsenal and medium-range missiles.
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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – North Korea channeled about 70 percent of the money it received for workers at the now-shuttered Kaesong industrial park into its weapons programs and to buy luxury goods for the impoverished nation’s tiny elite, South Korea said Sunday. Seoul closed the park last week in retaliation for Pyongyang’s recent rocket launch.
It did not detail how it arrived at that percentage.
North Korea announced the dissolution of the committee after Japan toughened its sanctions on North Korea in protest at the firing of a long-range rocket on Sunday and a nuclear test last month, both in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions. Still, Pyongyang took precautions to ensure the workers it hand-picked for the complex had minimal contact with their South Korean managers that could be potentially subversive. The average wage for North Korean workers at Kaesong was roughly $160 a month, paid to a state management company.
After their return, Seoul cut off electric power transmission to the complex, a measure that would also lead to the water supply being stopped, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said citing officials.
Kaesong had been shut only once before, for five months in 2013, amid heightened tensions following North Korea’s third nuclear test, although its continuing existence often seemed tenuous.
The South Korean government and companies had invested about 1 trillion won ($829 million) in Kaesong including 616 billion won in cash since it opened more than a decade ago, Unification Minister Hong Yong-pyo said on Wednesday. Pyongyang gets the vast majority of its earnings from trade with China.
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“North Korea’s continued development of ballistic missiles against the expressed will of the worldwide community requires the alliance to maintain effective and ready ballistic missile defenses”, he said in a statement.
