N. Korea orders military takeover of complex

Seoul’s unification ministry said on the phone that all of 280 South Koreans having stayed at the Kaesong Industrial Complex crossed the military demarcation line (MDL) into South Korea’s territory.

The 124 small and medium South Korean manufacturing companies that operate in Kaesong already had begun pulling out staff, equipment and goods.

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. Such a missile fired from North Korea could reach any location in the continental United States.

The reported military buildup Thursday came after the North Korean decision to expel South Koreans from a joint factory park.

The North has called the shutdown “a declaration of war” and has designated Kaesong as a military zone. Such sexist language is also typical of North Korean propaganda. Chongryong operates banks and dozens of schools across the country, as well as “pachinko” pinball parlors, trading companies to real estate firms, earning foreign currency for the communist North. Many of them have gone bankrupt in recent years amid North Korea’s troubled economy and weakening support here.

In May past year, 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.

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.

Earlier Thursday, along the South Korean side of the border, a stream of large white trucks lined up before crossing into North Korea, presumably to bring back products and gear from the factories.

The KIC last closed down when North Korea withdrew its 55,000 workers from the site in April, 2013 for a period of five months, amid increasing tensions and in response to U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises.

The question among some is, why now?

“Now we can say that all strings between the Koreas have been cut and that there are no more buffers”, said Dr Ko Yoo Hwan, a professor of North Korean Studies at Dongguk University in Seoul.

“We’ve chose to halt the operation of the Kaesong complex to prevent South Korean money from being funneled into the North’s nuke and missile developments and to protect our companies”.

The project that combined cheap North Korean labor with the capital and technology of affluent South Korea has always been viewed both as a test of the potential for reunification of a peninsula divided by the 1950-53 Korean War and a symbol of intractable tension.

The Senate is considering hitting North Korea with more stringent sanctions in the wake of Pyongyang’s satellite launch and technical advances that USA intelligence agencies say the reclusive Asian nation is…

A South Korean government official is quoted as saying the decision was taken reluctantly and it is hard to see how operations could be resumed in the near future.

Jang’s remarks reflected a general sense of outrage among Kaesong’s South Korean business community over the shutdown order.

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.