N. Korea closes access to joint factory zone with South

PanARMENIAN.Net - North Korea on Wednesday, April 3 closed access to a joint factory zone that earns $2 billion a year in trade for the impoverished state but will allow hundreds of South Koreans to return home, officials said, allaying fears they could have been held hostage, Reuters reported

Factories in the Kaesong Industrial Park were still believed to be operating, but North Korea's decision to block entry is a further sign of the growing tensions on the Korean peninsula. On Tuesday, Pyongyang said it would restart a mothballed nuclear reactor.

The industrial park has not formally stopped operations since it was inaugurated in August 2000 as part of efforts to improve ties between the two Koreas. It houses 123 companies and is staffed by 50,000 North Koreans and hundreds of South Korean business owners and managers.

More than 800 South Koreans had stayed overnight in the park, just north of the world's most heavily armed border. South Korea's Unification Ministry demanded the park be opened. The ministry later said 46 workers would return by 5 p.m. with the remainder staying there, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.

North Korea has threatened a nuclear strike on the United States and missile attacks on its Pacific bases after fresh UN sanctions were imposed for the country's third nuclear weapons test in February. Pyongyang has also said it was in a state of war with South Korea.

Among the hundreds of South Koreans waiting to get in on Wednesday there was a sense of foreboding that Kaesong would be closed permanently, dealing a death blow to the one remaining example of cooperation between the two Koreas.

South Korean companies pay a total of more than $80 million a year in wages to workers in the zone. The Kaesong project accounts for almost $2 billion a year in trade for North Korea, according to figures from South Korea.

The Unification Ministry said it had a contingency plan for dealing with any hostage taking, should it occur, but did not elaborate. North Korea held a South Korean hostage for months in 2009 after the worker allegedly slandered the North.

Most experts had not expected Pyongyang to jeopardize the zone, given the money it brings in.