N Korea pulls workers out of joint zone

Agence France-Presse

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North Korea announces it will pull workers out of the Kaesong joint industrial zone with South Korea

URGENT APPEAL. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appeals to North Korea “to refrain from taking any further provocative measures." UN Photo / Rick Bajornas

SEOUL, South Korea (3rd UPDATE) – North Korea announced Monday, April 8, it would pull all its 53,000 workers out of the Kaesong joint industrial zone with South Korea and suspend all commercial operations in the complex, blaming “military warmongers.”

North Korea “will withdraw all its employees from the zone,” Kim Yang-Gon, a senior ruling party official, said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

At the same time, Pyongyang “will temporarily suspend the operations in the zone and examine the issue of whether it will allow its existence or close it,” Kim added.

Kim, who toured Kaesong Monday morning, said the action had been forced by “military warmongers” seeking to make Kaesong a point of confrontation amid escalating military tensions on the Korean peninsula.

“How the situation will develop in the days ahead will entirely depend on the attitude of the South Korean authorities,” he added.

The North has banned South Korean managers and personnel from crossing the border to enter the complex — 10 kilometers (six miles) inside North Korea — since Wednesday.

So far ,13 of the 123 South Korean firms operating there have been forced to halt production due to fuel and raw material shortages.

More than 300 South Koreans who were working in Kaesong when the ban was imposed have returned to the North, but more than 500 remain in the complex.

UN chief: Stop provocations

The development came as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon made an urgent appeal to North Korea also on Monday to refrain from “any further provocation”, following reports that the increasingly isolated state is preparing another nuclear test.

“The Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea cannot go on like this, confronting and challenging the authority of the (UN) Security Council and the international community,” Ban said in The Hague.

“I am urging them to refrain from taking any further provocative measures.”

“This is an urgent and honest appeal from the international community including myself,” Ban told a press conference alongside Netherlands Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans in The Hague, where the UN chief is to attend the third review of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

S Korea backtracks, ‘no sign of new test’

South Korea also clarified Monday it had seen no fresh signs of North Korea preparing a fourth nuclear test, after earlier saying that activity was intensifying at the communist state’s main atomic site.

“There are activities” at the North’s Punggye-ri test site, but they “appear to be usual routine activities”, Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-Seok said. The Unification Ministry said another test did not appear to be “imminent”.

Intelligence reports suggest Pyongyang has readied two mid-range missiles on mobile launchers on its east coast, and is aiming at a test-firing before the April 15 birthday of late founding leader Kim Il-Sung.

Japan has ordered its armed forces to shoot down any North Korean missile headed towards its territory, a defense ministry spokesman in Tokyo said Monday.

A missile launch would still be highly provocative, especially given a strong rebuke the North’s sole ally China handed it at the weekend and a US concession to delay its own planned missile test. – Rappler.com

 

 

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