North Korea cuts military hotline with South

The North said it has closed the complex and designated it a military zone, adding that two inter-Korean communication hotlines will be also cut off.

All of South Koreans on Thursday withdrew safely from a jointly-run factory park with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) after Pyongyang’s decision to deport all South Korean nationals from the park.

Pyongyang responded to Seoul’s closure by announcing a military takeover of the complex and seizing everything that the companies’ South Korean managers were forced to leave behind.

Dozens of lorries were seen returning south over the border on Thursday, laden with goods and equipment, and workers were leaving.

The shutdown is one of Seoul’s strongest available punitive measures, but it is unclear how seriously the impoverished North would be hurt.

North Korea released footage on Thursday showing leader Kim Jong Un travelling on his private jet to supervise preparations for Sunday’s long-range rocket launch and provided a rare view of the country’s newly upgraded space centre on the east coast.

South Korean customs officials inspect goods and baggage that South Korean workers took with them when they left the Kaesong Industrial Complex on Thursday, after the South Korean government announced Wednesday that the park would be completely shut down.

Despite volatile North-South relations over the years, Kaesong had been shut only once before, for five months in 2013, amid heightened tensions following its third nuclear test. Its future had often seemed uncertain over the past decade.

Park, the South Korean president, has now done something her conservative predecessor resisted, even after two attacks blamed on North Korea killed 50 South Koreans in 2010.

The question among some is, Why now?

But awareness that much of the money the North made from Kaesong went to leader Kim Jong-Un’s inner circle and the country’s nuclear weapons program has always grated, and last month’s nuclear test followed by a long-range rocket launch on Sunday, proved the final straw. Supporters of the project said that kind of contact was important in promoting inter-Korean understanding, despite concerns that isolated Pyongyang might have used proceeds from Kaesong to help fund its nuclear and missile programmes.

According to an official from the South’s Ministry of Unification, a total of 248 South Koreans – workers from 124 companies and officials of the management committee of the complex – were in the park as of Thursday afternoon.

Several people who crossed back into the South on Thursday morning said they had noticed an increased military presence in Kaesong, including armed soldiers carrying backpacks and sleeping bags.

Combining South Korean initiative, capital and technology with the North’s cheap labour, the industrial park has been seen as a test case for reunification between the Koreas.

The U.N. Security Council has strongly condemned the launch and promised to take action, while Washington has vowed to ensure the 15-nation body impose “serious consequences” on Pyongyang as soon as possible. The decision was unavoidable, said South Korea.

All North Korean workers will be withdrawn from the factory park as well, it said.

In May a year ago, the North executed its defense chief by antiaircraft gun at a firing range, the South’s spy agency said in a report to members of parliament.

It has become a major revenue source for the cash-strapped North, with South Korean firms paying up to €90 million in annual wages to the North Koreans.