S. Koreans still at joint factory after deadline

In a statement issued Wednesday, South Korean Unification Minister Hong Yong Pyo explained the reasoning behind the decision to take bolder action.

Another government official declined to disclose the government’s contingency plans as of Thursday afternoon if Pyongyang detained South Korean nationals or blocked them from removing goods or assets from their factories.

Isolated North Korea faces mounting pressure following what it says was a satellite launch on Sunday.

But with vastly more trade being done with China – one of the North’s last remaining allies – than with the United States, politicians admitted that the measures were aimed as much at demonstrating USA resolve to Beijing, as at Pyongyang itself.

Well after the deadline passed, a South Korean manager at Kaesong told The Associated Press by phone that he had been instructed to wait for further instructions from South Korean officials.

A group of people braved the rain for hours on the southern side of a cross-border bridge on Thursday anxiously waiting for their family members and co-workers to return to South Korea. But at the last minute the employee had to drive back to the factory to unload the clothes because of North Korea’s announcement that it would freeze all South Korean assets there.

“North Korea remains a serious threat to peace and stability in the region and in the world”, said Sen.

South Korea said ceasing operations at the complex would stop funds from the park being used to develop nuclear and missile technology. During the postwar period until around the 1990s, some of Japan’s left-leaning politicians had much closer ties to Chongryong than today, some of them even closer than to South Korea’s military government back then. More damage will be inflicted on South Korean tenant companies at the complex, which have been producing more than US$500 million worth of products there each year.

A statement from the DPRK’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland said the DPRK will deport all of South Koreans staying at the Kaesong Industrial Complex by 5:30 p.m. local time.

“Nobody wants to invade”, says Bob Maginnis of the Family Research Council, “but I think measured reaction, using some sort of precision strikes, taking out their capability”.

In March 2013, it was closed for several months after North Korea blocked South Korean staff’s access to the complex to protest joint military exercises by South Korea and the US.

Vehicles pass through an inter-Korean immigration office in South Korea’s western border city of Paju, South Korea, February 11, 2016, a day after Seoul announced it will shut down the complex in retaliation for the North’s series of provocations.

South Korean news agency Yonhap reported the killing citing a source “familiar with North Korean affairs”. The industrial park is a joint project between the two Koreas. He said he was not sure whether he would return to the South today.

The decision to shut down the complex, a symbol of cross-border reconciliation and cooperation, has sparked concerns that bilateral tensions could spiral out of control and Seoul’s trust-building efforts may be headed down the drain.

The average wage for North Korean workers at Kaesong was roughly $US160 ($226.25) a month, paid to a state management company.

Sanders was quoted as saying that he had to be “necessarily absent”, but the increased sanctions were “absolutely essential” to ending North Korea’s nuclear program.