Tag Archives: South Koreans

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SKorea to open restored 600-year-old capital gate

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Five years after being torched by a disgruntled elderly man, the stone and wood southern gate to the old walled capital of Seoul has been painstakingly restored to its late 14th Century glory by a small army of master craftsmen using traditional tools.

From the hand-carved stones of the walls flanking Sungnyemun gate, to the finely wrought details painted on the inner beams of the graceful, upwardly curving roof, each detail of what’s considered the country’s top treasure is meant to harken back to the day the gate was completed in 1398. On the ceiling beneath the center archway there are two large, whiskered and horned dragons, rendered in vibrant yellow, green, blue, pink and orange scales.

Ahead of its public opening Saturday, reporters on Monday got an advance tour of the gate, where royal officials of the Joseon Dynasty unveiled policies, offered prayers for rain and hung the heads of executed criminals.

The two-story pavilion stands in vivid contrast to the surrounding glass-and-steel skyscrapers and the bustling, traffic-choked streets that radiate from the gate into a city that has seemed to be in a perpetual building frenzy since emerging from the rubble of the 1950-53 Korean War.

A team led by master carpenters, tile makers, stone carvers, blacksmiths and painters labored to restore the gate — work that officials say could have taken one to two years using modern tools and methods.

Instead, workers trimmed timber with axes and chisels, hammered massive stones into shape, fired handmade roof tiles in kilns before affixing them to the roof using traditional tools and worked in as much of the surviving original timber as possible. Workers even wore traditional Korean clothing, regardless of the weather.

“Traditional methods guarantee a more natural and authentic look, whereas machines produce a glossy but artificial feel,” said Choi Jong-deok, a government official who oversaw the project until earlier this year.

The gate, also known as Namdaemun, was destroyed in February 2008 by a man angry over the way the government handled a dispute with him over land. The arsonist is serving a 10-year prison term. The fire destroyed 90 percent of the gate’s upper floor and 10 percent of its lower floor, Seoul’s Cultural Heritage Administration said.

The loss of the gate in a massive, manmade fire shocked South Koreans, many of whom have a deep emotional attachment to Sungnyemun and

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All SKorean nationals to leave from NKorea factory

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South Korea is preparing to pull out its last remaining nationals from a shuttered factory park in North Korea and empty out the complex for the first time since its 2004 opening.

The withdrawal of the 50 South Koreans would also raise a serious question about the future of the Kaesong complex, the last symbol of inter-Korean rapprochement.

Operation at Kaesong have been suspended since early April when North Korea barred South Korean factory managers and supply trucks from entering the park and withdrew all its 53,000 workers amid tension with Seoul and Washington.

Seoul on Saturday began pulling out its nationals from Kaesong after Pyongyang rejected its dialogue offer.

Seoul’s Unification Ministry says it’s waiting for North Korea‘s approval for the remaining South Koreans to leave Kaesong on Monday.

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Last groups of South Koreans leave shuttered North Korean factory

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The final group of South Koreans working in a shuttered factory park in North Korea is expected to leave Monday after their government ordered them to leave the border city, as Pyongyang issued a new threat to shut down the last symbol of detente.

The group will follow a similar group that left Saturday after stuffing their cars with as much as they could take from their factories in the North Korean city of Kaesong, located just on the other side of the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas.

A total of 125 South Koreans left Saturday, and the last 50, including those who manage the facilities, will leave Monday, the Unification Ministry said.

Once the last South Koreans leave, what will become of the jointly run factory park remains unclear.

“It is only a matter of time” before the complex shuts down for good, an unnamed spokesman for North Korea‘s General Bureau for Central Guidance said Saturday. “We treasure the Kaesong industrial complex but won’t bestow favors on those who return evil for good.”

Until earlier this month, 53,000 North Korean workers were managed by 800 South Koreans at more than 120 South Korean-run factories in a special economic zone in Kaesong. The decade-old arrangement provided Kaesong with work and salaries, and the South Koreans with cheap labor.

But as tensions flared between Seoul and Pyongyang over North Korea‘s nuclear ambitions, joint U.S.-South Korean military drills and other perceived slights, Pyongyang pulled its entire work force out on April 9 and banned South Koreans from crossing the border to bring food and supplies.

With factories suspending operations and food supplies dwindling, Seoul issued a Friday deadline for North Korea to agree to talks on Kaesong.

After Pyongyang dismissed the call as an insufficient show of sincerity, Ryoo Kihl-jae, South Korea‘s top official on relations with North Korea, announced that Seoul would pull the rest of the South Koreans from Kaesong out of concern for their safety.

Han Jae-kwon, head of the association of South Koreans managing factories in Kaesong, expressed regret that the government made the decision without notifying them first. Speaking in front of businessmen running factories in Kaesong, he called on Seoul to continue to pursue dialogue with Pyongyang over the industrial park.

“I came down for the time being with the hope that the Kaesong industrial complex would reopen later,” Lee Byung-yun, a South Korean worker, said after crossing the border on Saturday.

Dozens of cars, many of them covered with cargo from hood to trunk, lined up at a checkpoint to enter South Korea after arriving from the North across the heavily fortified border between the two countries.

The park, which broke ground in 2003, is the last joint Korean project left from a previous era of reconciliation. Other projects, including tours to a scenic mountain in North Korea and to downtown Kaesong, were suspended in recent years.

However, Lee Hochul, a political science professor at Incheon National University in South Korea, noted that neither side has decided to permanently shut down the industrial complex.

“This is a war

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Last groups of SKoreans leaving NKorean factory

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Regret etched on their faces, the last groups of South Korean managers began pulling out Saturday from a shuttered factory park in North Korea after their government ordered them to leave the border city.

The South Koreans stuffed their cars with as much as they could take from their factories in the North Korean city of Kaesong, located just on the other side of the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas. A total of 125 South Koreans left Saturday, and the last 50, including government employees managing facilities, will leave Monday, the Unification Ministry said.

Once the last South Koreans leave, what will become of the jointly run factory park remains unclear.

Until earlier this month, 53,000 North Korean workers were managed by 800 South Koreans at more than 120 South Korean-run factories in a special economic zone in Kaesong. The decade-old arrangement provided Kaesong with work and salaries, and the South Koreans with cheap labor.

But as tensions flared between Seoul and Pyongyang over North Korea‘s nuclear ambitions, joint U.S.-South Korean military drills and other perceived slights, Pyongyang pulled its entire work force out on April 9 and banned South Koreans from crossing the border to bring food and supplies.

With factories suspending operations and food supplies dwindling, Seoul issued a Friday deadline for North Korea to agree to talks on Kaesong.

After Pyongyang dismissed the call as an insufficient show of sincerity, Ryoo Kihl-jae, South Korea‘s top official on relations with North Korea, announced that Seoul would pull the rest of the South Koreans from Kaesong out of concern for their safety.

Han Jae-kwon, head of the association of South Koreans managing factories in Kaesong, expressed regret that the government made the decision without notifying them first. Speaking in front of businessmen running factories in Kaesong, he called on Seoul to continue to pursue dialogue with Pyongyang over the industrial park.

“I came down for the time being with the hope that the Kaesong industrial complex would reopen later,” Lee Byung-yun, a South Korean worker, said after crossing the border on Saturday. Park Yun-kyu, head of a factory in Kaesong, told reporters he had no choice but to pull his staff out in the face of a government call to leave Kaesong.

Dozens of cars, many of them covered with cargo

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Majority of South Koreans at North Korean factory to return

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Roughly three quarters of the 175 South Koreans still at a shuttered factory park in North Korea are scheduled to return Saturday after Seoul decided to withdraw them over Pyongyang’s rejection of its demand for talks on the last symbol of inter-Korean cooperation, the government said.

The industrial complex in the border city of Kaesong bustled with more than 53,000 North Korean workers and 800 South Korean managers before Pyongyang pulled its entire work force out and banned South Koreans from entering it earlier this month.

The park, the biggest employer in Kaesong with a population of 200,000 according to North Korean officials, is the most significant casualty in the recent deterioration of ties between the Koreas. Operating with South Korean know-how and technology and with cheap labor from North Korea since 2004, it has weathered past cycles of hostility between the rivals, including two attacks blamed on North Korea in 2010 that killed 50 South Koreans.

On Thursday, Seoul issued a Friday deadline for North Korea to respond to its call for talks because it was worried about its workers not having access to food and medicine. North Korea hasn’t allowed South Korea to send supplies to its managers in Kaesong since the ban.

Just hours after Pyongyang dismissed Seoul’s demand for talks as “deceptive,” Ryoo Kihl-jae, South Korea‘s top official on relations with North Korea, said Friday in a televised statement his government decided to pull all the remaining South Koreans in Kaesong.

“We’ve made the inevitable decision to bring back all the remaining personnel in Kaesong for the protection of our people as their difficulties continue to grow,” Unification Minister Ryoo said, urging the North to protect the property of South Korean companies at Kaesong and ensure the safe return of South Koreans home.

His ministry said later Friday in a text message that 127 of the remaining South Koreans in Kaesong would return Saturday. The remaining workers are expected to leave Kaesong on Sunday.

In Friday’s statement, a spokesman for the North’s powerful National Defense Commission promised the workers’ safety if they withdrew, while lashing out at Seoul over ongoing U.S.-South Korean military drills and the spreading of anti-North Korea leaflets at the border as proof of Seoul’s insincerity.

“If they are truly worried about the lives of South Korean personnel in the (complex), they may withdraw all of them to the south side where there are stockpiles of food and raw materials and sound medical conditions,” said the statement carried by official media.

“If the South’s puppet group looks away from reality and pursues the worsening of the situation, we will be compelled to first take final and decisive grave measures,” it said.

Impoverished North Korea has objected to views in South Korea that the Kaesong park is a source of badly needed hard currency. South Korean companies paid salaries to North Korean workers averaging $127 a month, according to South Korea‘s government. That is less than one-sixteenth of the average salary of South Korean manufacturer workers.

The complex, conceived following the historic 2000 summit between

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SKoreans hoping to return to Kaesong factories

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The South Korean entrepreneurs who invested up to 10 years and millions of dollars in the shuttered Kaesong industrial complex across the border in North Korea have little more than hope to cling to as assembly lines sit idle day after day.

They say they want to go back to work. The sooner the better. They say they cannot abandon their investments in factories, or the cheap North Korean labor that helped them put aside misgivings about doing business with the South’s unpredictable neighbor.

North Korea has been unrelenting in its decision to bar South Koreans from entering the factory city and withdraw the 53,000 North Korean workers who manned assembly lines.

As the lockout enters a third week, some businesses are already quietly mulling giving up on Kaesong altogether.

From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/VzoN_VPB-D0/

Articles of Interest

N. Korea to Seoul: Apologize for Protests or We'll Attack

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By Matt Cantor While North Korea celebrated its first leader’s birthday yesterday, South Koreans were busily protesting the occasion—and Pyongyang has had about enough of that. The North has threatened “sledgehammer blows” against the South if it fails to apologize for the demonstrations. “Our retaliatory action will start without any notice from…

From: http://www.newser.com/story/166313/n-korea-to-seoul-apologize-for-protests-or-well-attack.html

News, Politics, Government

North Korea rejects South Korea's calls for talks

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North Korea on Sunday rebuffed a South Korean proposal to resolve rising tensions through dialogue, dismissing it as a “crafty trick” by its rival.

Tensions have been high on the Korean Peninsula for weeks, with Pyongyang threatening to attack Seoul and Washington for conducting joint military drills and for supporting U.N. sanctions imposed on North Korea for a February nuclear test.

While the threats are largely seen as rhetoric, U.S. and South Korean officials have said they believe North Korea may test-fire a mid-range missile designed to reach the U.S. territory of Guam.

Pyongyang also took a direct shot at Seoul by pulling more than 50,000 North Korean workers from their joint factory park in the border city of Kaesong and denying South Koreans access to the complex just north of the Demilitarized Zone.

The move has brought the South Korean-run factories to a standstill, threatening a shutdown of the last joint project left between the two Koreas.

Last Thursday, Seoul pressed Pyongyang to discuss restarting operations at the factory park. South Korean President Park Geun-hye has promoted seeking peace with North Korea, a change in policy from the hard-line stance of her predecessor, Lee Myung-bak.

But on Sunday, North Korea‘s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said Pyongyang has no intention of talking with Seoul unless it abandons its confrontational posture.

South Korea‘s presidential Blue House said North Korea‘s rebuttal of its dialogue offer was “very regrettable.” A Blue House statement urged North Korea to take responsible measures to help relieve difficulties facing South Koreans working at the joint factory park.

The two Koreas technically remain at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. The U.S. keeps about 28,500 troops in South Korea to help deter potential aggression by the North.

From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/Q11mCnOaH24/

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S. Korea confirms N. Korea workers not showing up at factory

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North Korean workers didn’t show up for work at a jointly run factory complex with South Korea on Tuesday, a day after Pyongyang suspended operations at the last remaining major economic link between rivals locked in an increasingly hostile relationship.

Some of the more than 400 South Korean managers still at the Kaesong industrial complex just north of the Demilitarized Zone said they planned to stay and watch over their equipment until food ran out.

Pyongyang said Monday it would pull out its 53,000 workers at the complex, which began production in 2004 and is the biggest employer in the North’s third-biggest city. By closing the factory, Pyongyang is showing it is willing to hurt its own shaky economy in order to display its anger with South Korea and the United States.

Pyongyang has unleashed a torrent of threats at Seoul and Washington following U.N. sanctions punishing the North for its third nuclear test, on Feb. 12, and joint military exercises between the U.S. and South Korea that allies call routine but that Pyongyang sees as invasion preparation. In recent days there have also been worries in Seoul of an even larger provocation from Pyongyang, including another possible nuclear test or rocket launch.

Some North Koreans who worked an overnight shift at Kaesong were still there Tuesday morning, but South Koreans said those scheduled for day shifts didn’t show. A North Korean woman at Kaesong said in a telephone call that she planned to return home now that her night shift was done.

A South Korean worker who remained at Kaesong said that workers normally show up around 8 or 8:30 a.m. “They did not show up,” said the worker, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The worker said he planned to stay at the factory until food runs out. He said he and four other colleagues had been living on instant noodles. “We haven’t had any rice since last night. I miss rice,” he said Tuesday morning. “We are running out of food. We will stay here until we run out of ramen.”

He said he and his colleagues are getting news about Kaesong through South Korean television. There is no Internet connection at Kaesong.

The point of North Korea‘s threats and possible future provocations, analysts say, isn’t a full-scale war, which North Korea would certainly lose. It’s seen instead as an effort to force new, Pyongyang-friendly policies in South Korea and Washington and to boost domestic loyalty for Kim Jong Un, the country’s young, still relatively untested new leader.

Monday’s statement about Kaesong came from Kim Yang Gon, secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea. It did not say what would happen to the 475 South Korean managers still at the Kaesong industrial complex.

Kim’s statement said North Korea will now consider whether to close the complex permanently. “How the situation will develop in the days ahead will entirely depend on the attitude” of South Korean authorities, it said.

Yoo Ho-yeol, a North Korea expert at …read more

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South Korea's top military officer puts off US trip

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South Korea‘s top military officer has put off a visit to Washington because of escalating tensions with North Korea that have also compelled more than a dozen South Korean companies to halt operations at a joint factory complex in the North, officials said Sunday.

South Korea‘s military is on heightened alert following North Korean threats to launch attacks on the U.S. and South Korea and produce more fuel for atomic weapons. Pyongyang is angry over ongoing South Korea-U.S. military drills and U.N. sanctions issued over North Korea‘s latest nuclear test.

South Korea‘s defense minister said last week that North Korea has moved at least one missile with a “considerable range” to its east coast, and speculated that the North may be planning to test it. The missile could possibly be the Musudan missile, capable of striking American bases in Guam with its estimated range of up to 4,000 kilometers (2,490 miles).

The tensions led South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Jung Seung-jo to cancel his plan to meet with U.S. counterpart, Gen. Martin Dempsey, in Washington on April 16 for regular talks.

The allies have agreed to reschedule the meeting because Jung couldn’t be away from South Korea for several days at a time when North Korea is intensifying its rhetoric, said a South Korean Joint Chiefs spokesman who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing office policy.

The U.S. Defense Department has delayed an intercontinental ballistic missile test that had been planned for next week because of concerns the launch could be misinterpreted and exacerbate the Korean crisis, a senior defense official told The Associated Press Saturday.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel decided to delay the test at an Air Force base in California until sometime next month, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the test delay and requested anonymity.

Previously, the U.S. had followed provocations from North Korea with shows of force connected to the joint exercises with South Korea. It has sent nuclear capable B-2 and B-52 bombers and stealth F-22 fighters to participate in the drills.

In addition, the U.S. said last week that two of the Navy’s missile-defense ships were moved closer to the Korean Peninsula, and a land-based missile-defense system is being deployed to the Pacific territory of Guam later this month. The Pentagon last month announced longer-term plans to strengthen its U.S.-based missile defenses.

Washington is taking the North Korean threats seriously, though U.S. leaders say they have seen no signs that the North is preparing for a large-scale attack.

North Korea successfully shot a satellite into space in December and conducted its third nuclear test in February. It has threatened to launch a nuclear attack on the United States, though many analysts, say the North hasn’t achieved technology to manufacture a miniaturized nuclear warhead that could fit on a long-range missile capable of hitting the U.S.

North Korea also raised tensions Wednesday when it barred South Koreans and supply trucks from entering the Kaesong industrial complex, where South Korean companies have employed thousands of North Korean workers for …read more

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More SKoreans leave NKorean factory park under ban

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More South Koreans have begun to leave North Korea and the factory park where they work, four days after Pyongyang closed the border to people and goods.

Seoul’s Unification Ministry says seven South Koreans left the Kaesong industrial park Saturday morning, and about 100 of the roughly 600 still there were expected to return home by day’s end.

One manager interviewed as he left says North Korea has bolstered security along the border.

The industrial park is the last remnant of North-South cooperation. Pyongyang’s blocking of traffic there is among many provocative moves it has made recently in anger over U.N. sanctions for its Feb. 12 nuclear test and current U.S.-South Korean military drills. North Korea suggested earlier this week that diplomats in Pyongyang leave for their own safety.

…read more

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South Koreans leave joint factory park as North warns embassies on safety

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More South Koreans on Saturday began to leave North Korea and the factory park where they work, four days after Pyongyang closed the border to people and goods.

Twenty-one South Koreans returned from the Kaesong industrial park Saturday morning, and about 100 of the roughly 600 still there were expected to return home by day’s end, the Unification Ministry in Seoul said.

One manager, Han Nam-il, interviewed as he left, said he saw North Korean security officials “fully armed” before he crossed the border.

The industrial park is the last remnant of North-South cooperation. Pyongyang’s blocking of traffic there is among many provocative moves it has made recently in anger over U.N. sanctions for its Feb. 12 nuclear test and current U.S.-South Korean military drills.

The communist dictatorship deployed mid-range missile launchers to its east coast and reportedly warned foreign embassies Friday it cannot guarantee the safety of diplomats after April 10.

Reuters reported early Friday that North Korea deployed two of its intermediate range missiles on mobile launchers and hid them on the east coast of the country, citing a South Korean news agency.

Earlier in the week, North Korea said it would restart a plutonium reactor closed in 2007 and use it to make fuel for nuclear bombs.

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom foreign office confirmed in a statement Friday that North Korea asked a number of foreign embassies in Pyongyang to consider moving staff out since they could not assure their safety in the event of conflict.

“We are consulting international partners about these developments. No decisions have been taken, and we have no immediate plans to withdraw our Embassy,” the UK foreign office statement said.

Under the Vienna Convention that governs diplomatic missions, host governments are required to assist in the evacuation of embassy staff from the country in the event of conflict.

North Korea has railed for weeks against joint U.S. and South Korean military exercises taking place in South Korea and has expressed anger over tightened sanctions for a February nuclear test.

“The current question was not whether, but when a war would break out on the peninsula,” because of the “increasing threat from the United States“, China‘s state news agency Xinhua quoted the North’s Foreign Ministry as saying, according to a Reuters report.

U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Caitlin Hayden has called North Korea‘s threats “unhelpful and unconstructive.”

“It is yet another offering in a long line of provocative statements that only serve to further isolate North Korea from the rest of the international community and undermine its goal of economic development,” she said. “North Korea should stop its provocative threats and instead concentrate on abiding by its international obligations.”

North Korea said last week it had entered a “state of war” with South Korea, but officials in Seoul say they have seen no preparations for a full-scale attack while the chance of a localized conflict remains. Earlier Pyongyang threatened a nuclear attack on the United States.

North Korea has not forced South Korean workers to leave Kaesong, but some of the South Korean companies working there are running …read more

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Pyongyang rumblings have little effect on SKoreans

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Outsiders might hear the opening notes of a war in the deluge of threats and provocations from North Korea, but to South Koreans it is a familiar drumbeat.

Separated from the North by a heavily fortified border for decades, they have for the most part lived with tough talk from Pyongyang all their lives. In annual defense drills, war alarms ring in their ears.

Foreigners unused to North Korean rumblings have canceled trips to the Korean Peninsula. But to get South Koreans‘ attention, Pyongyang must compete with the economy, celebrity scandals, baseball games and cherry blossoms.

At a restaurant in downtown Seoul that sells kimchi stew and fried cutlets, owner Lee Chul-je said he wasn’t worried about the threats, as news about them poured from a TV in the corner.

“North Korea does this all the time,” the 65-year-old said as he dropped slices of raw meat into a tenderizer. “I’m sure things will become OK again.”

Office worker Park Geun-san is more interested in next week’s Seoul concert by “Gangnam Style” singer PSY than in the North’s dark pronouncements.

“My life isn’t affected by them,” he said. “I’m really excited about going to the concert. North Korea doesn’t distract me from looking forward to it.”

North Korea has responded with fury over U.N. sanctions following its third nuclear test Feb. 12, and over ongoing U.S.-South Korean military exercises. Among other statements, it has threatened a nuclear strike against the U.S., declared that it has scrapped the Korean War armistice, blocked South Koreans from entering a jointly run industrial park and announced that it will restart a plutonium reactor and produce more fuel for nuclear bombs.

The litany of provocations has rocketed North Korea to among the top news headlines around the world, but not always in South Korea. When North Korea vowed this week to restart the reactor, major South Korean dailies gave more space on their front pages to explaining the government‘s plans to give tax breaks to home buyers. On Naver, the most visited web portal in South Korea, the most-read news this week has been South Korean pitcher Ryu Hyun-jin’s LA Dodgers’ debut.

There is no sign of panic. At Home Plus, a major supermarket chain, no one was buying up bottled water or instant noodles. “There has been …read more

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North Korea's missile launchers on the move, indicating possible new provocation

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North Korea has begun moving its mid-range missile launchers, possibly indicating a looming test as tensions are already boiling on the peninsula, U.S. officials told Fox News.

Earlier Thursday, South Korea said North Korea moved a missile with “considerable range” to its east coast after an unnamed spokesman for the North Korean army warned the U.S. Wednesday that its military has been cleared to wage an attack using “smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear” weapons.

South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin dismissed reports in the Japanese and South Korean media that the missile could be a KN-08, which is believed to be a long-range missile that if operable could hit the United States.

Kim told lawmakers at a hearing that the missile’s range is considerable but not far enough to hit the U.S. mainland. He said he did not know the reasons behind the missile movement, saying it “could be for testing or drills.”

The range he described could refer to a mobile North Korean missile known as the Musudan, which has a range of 1,800 miles. That would make Japan and South Korea potential targets, but little is known about the missile’s accuracy.

North Korea has railed for weeks against joint U.S. and South Korean military exercises taking place in South Korea and has expressed anger over tightened sanctions for a February nuclear test.

U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Caitlin Hayden has called North Korea‘s threats “unhelpful and unconstructive.”

“It is yet another offering in a long line of provocative statements that only serve to further isolate North Korea from the rest of the international community and undermine its goal of economic development,” she said. “North Korea should stop its provocative threats and instead concentrate on abiding by its international obligations.”

Russia said Thursday that North Korea‘s disregard for the U.N. sanctions is hurting the chances of resuming stalled six-party nuclear talks, Reuters reports.

“Attempts by Pyongyang to violate … decisions of the U.N. Security Council are categorically unacceptable,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said during a briefing.

Despite North Korea‘s rhetoric, analysts say they do not expect a nuclear attack, which knows the move could trigger a destructive, suicidal war that no one in the region wants.

But following through on one threat Wednesday, North Korean border authorities refused to allow entry to South Koreans who manage jointly run factories in the North Korean city of Kaesong.

Washington calls the military drills, which this time have incorporated fighter jets and nuclear-capable stealth bombers, routine annual exercises between the allies. Pyongyang calls them rehearsals for a northward invasion.

The foes fought on opposite sides of the three-year Korean War, which ended in a truce in 1953. The divided Korean Peninsula remains in a technical state of war six decades later, and Washington keeps 28,500 troops in South Korea to protect its ally.

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Washington was doing all it can to defuse the situation, echoing comments a day earlier by Secretary of State John Kerry.

“Some of the actions they’ve taken over the last few weeks present a real and …read more

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NKorea refuses to let SKoreans enter joint factory

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North Korea on Wednesday barred South Korean workers from entering a jointly run factory park just over the heavily armed border in the North in the latest sign that Pyongyang’s warlike stance toward South Korea and the United States is moving from words to action.

The Kaesong move came a day after the North announced it would restart its long-shuttered plutonium reactor and a uranium enrichment plant, both of which could produce fuel for nuclear weapons that Pyongyang is developing and has threatened to hurl at the U.S. but which experts don’t think it will be able to accomplish for years.

The North’s rising rhetoric over recent weeks has been met by a display of U.S. military strength, including flights of nuclear-capable bombers and stealth jets at the annual South Korean-U.S. military drills that the allies call routine but that North Korea claims are invasion preparations.

The Kaesong industrial park started producing goods in 2004 and has been an unusual point of cooperation in an otherwise hostile relationship between the Koreas, whose three-year war ended in 1953 with an armistice. Its continued operation even through past episodes of high tension has reassured foreign multinationals that another Korean War is unlikely and their investments in prosperous dynamic South Korea are safe.

“The Kaesong factory park has been the last stronghold of detente between the Koreas,” said Hong Soon-jik, a North Korea researcher at the Seoul-based Hyundai Research Institute.

He said tension between the Koreas could escalate further over Kaesong because Seoul may react with its own punitive response and Pyongyang will then hit back with another move.

It is unclear how long North Korea will prevent South Koreans from entering the industrial park, which is located in the North Korean border city of Kaesong and provides jobs for more than 50,000 North Koreans. The last major disruption at the park amid tensions over U.S.-South Korean military drills in 2009 lasted just three days.

Seoul’s Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Hyung-suk said Pyongyang was allowing South Koreans to return home from Kaesong. Some 33 workers of about 860 South Koreans at Kaesong returned Wednesday. But Kim said about 480 South Koreans who had planned to travel to the park Wednesday were being refused entry.

Trucks streamed back into South Korea through its Paju border checkpoint in the morning, just minutes after heading through it, after being refused entry into …read more
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Articles of Interest

North Korea Refusing South Korean Workers Entry To Jointly-Run Factory Park: Report

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By The Huffington Post News Editors

SEOUL, April 3 (Reuters) – North Korean authorities were not allowing any South Korean workers into a joint industrial park on Wednesday, South Korea’s Unification Ministry and a Reuters witness said, adding to tensions between the two countries.
A South Korean official said hundreds of South Koreans currently in the Kaesong Industrial zone would be allowed to leave. North Korea had earlier delayed access to the park.
The zone generates $2 billion a year in trade for the impoverished North. (Writing by Dean Yates)

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More on North Korea

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South Korea's first female president has rough start in first month in office

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South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s honeymoon was over before it even began.

Only a month on the job, Park has stumbled repeatedly in the face of bitter opposition to policy proposals and her choices for top government posts.

Half a dozen Cabinet appointees have quit under fire. The latest is Han Man-soo, who withdrew his nomination for antitrust chief Monday amid allegations he stashed millions of dollars overseas to avoid taxes. Other claims that have brought down Park appointees include real estate speculation, a sex-for-influence scandal, bribery and links to an arms broker.

“A couple of flops would’ve been acceptable, but having a total of six failures in the first few months means that the problem lies with her style,” said Lee Cheol-hee, head of the Dumon Political Strategy Institute, a think tank in Seoul. “She seems to think she can just hand down a list of people she prefers, without thinking hard about whether those people’s credentials and ethical records fit the jobs they will be handling.”

Critics also complain that she’s still short on specifics about how to deal with pressing issues including an increasingly belligerent North Korea and serious domestic anxiety about fewer stable jobs, heavy household debt and a wide income gap.

Park on Monday acknowledged the setbacks but said they should only make her administration more determined. “Because the launch of the new government has been delayed by one month, we should work harder to fulfill our vision,” she said.

The presidential Blue House did not answer calls seeking additional comment.

The troubles of the country’s first female president have a lot to do with the fiercely divided political and social landscape in this still relatively young and rambunctious democracy. She also carries the heavy historical baggage of being the daughter of a dictator whose legacy still divides South Koreans.

The 61-year-old president, who was elected in December and inaugurated Feb. 25, has long faced claims of being aloof and an “imperial” decision-maker. The genesis of this criticism comes from her upbringing.

She is the eldest child of late President Park Chung-hee, who led South Korea for 18 years in the 1960s and ’70s and is both denounced for human rights abuses and praised as a strong leader. She grew up in the Blue House and served as her father’s first lady for the last five years of his rule, after her mother was killed in 1974 by an assassin who said he was sent by North Korea.

“When her father ruled, no one questioned the president’s picks,” Lee said. “But things have changed since. … It’s like Park is driving a car with a navigator system that has only decades-old maps.”

Even Park’s own ruling Saenuri Party has been critical. A spokesman called for a better system of screening appointees, and said whoever vetted the failed candidates should be held responsible.

Park spent much of her first month in office negotiating with opposition lawmakers over an ambitious government reorganization plan that aims to focus on science and economic growth. An agreement was reached only last week, …read more
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News, Politics, Government

NKorea criticizes SKorea prez's 'swish of skirt'

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North Korea‘s first public, senior-level mention of South Korea‘s first female president ended up being a sexist crack. The body that controls Pyongyang’s military complained Wednesday about the “venomous swish” of her skirt.

But despite that swipe, and a continuing torrent of rhetoric from Pyongyang threatening nuclear war and other mayhem, President Park Geun-hye is sticking by her campaign vow to reach out to North Korea‘s young leader, Kim Jong Un, and to send the country much-needed humanitarian aid.

Public frustration with the last five years of North-South relations, which saw North Korean nuclear tests, long-range rocket launches and attacks that left dozens of South Koreans dead, is a big part of the reason Park is trying to build trust with Pyongyang, even as she and South Korea‘s military promise to respond forcefully to any attack from the North.

Park’s predecessor, Lee Myung-bak, infuriated North Korea by linking aid and concessions to what turned out to be nonexistent progress on North Korea‘s past commitments to abandon its atomic weapons ambitions. In doing so, he reversed past liberal governments’ policy of providing huge aid shipments with few strings attached.

Like Lee, Park is a member of South Korea‘s main conservative party, but she has promised to find a middle ground by re-engaging Pyongyang through aid shipments, reconciliation talks and the resumption of some large-scale economic initiatives as progress occurs on the nuclear issue. Park has also held out the possibility of a summit with Kim Jong Un.

Park’s point man on North Korea, Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae, said this week that regardless of the political situation, South Korea intends to eventually send humanitarian aid shipments for infants and other vulnerable people in North Korea.

Ryoo said South Korea won’t accept North Korea‘s nuclear development or any provocations and called for a dialogue between the countries to improve strained ties.

The Unification Ministry said Wednesday that South Korea hasn’t started discussing when to start making shipments, what aid items might be sent and how much it will send.

Park’s North Korea policy is of keen interest not only on the Korean Peninsula but also among officials in Washington, Beijing and Tokyo. Analysts believe her course will set the initial tone for new North Korea policy in those capitals.

Park’s officials have also kept a wary …read more
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South Korea and US begin military drills as North Korea threatens war

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North Korean state media said Monday that Pyongyang had carried through with a threat to cancel the 60-year-old armistice that ended the Korean War, as it and South Korea staged dueling war games amid threatening rhetoric that has risen to the highest level since North Korea rained artillery shells on a South Korean island in 2010.

Enraged over the South’s joint military drills with the United States and recent U.N. sanctions, Pyongyang has piled threat on top of threat, including vows to launch a nuclear strike on the U.S. Seoul has responded with tough talk of its own and has placed its troops on high alert.

The North Korean government made no formal announcement Monday on its repeated threats to scrap the armistice, but the country’s main newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, reported that the armistice was nullified Monday as Pyongyang had earlier announced it would.

The North followed through on another promise Monday, shutting down a Red Cross hotline that the North and South used for general communication and to discuss aid shipments and separated families’ reunions.

The 11-day military drills that started Monday involve 10,000 South Korean and about 3,000 American troops. Those coincide with two months of separate U.S.-South Korean field exercises that began March 1.

The drills are held annually, and this year, according to South Korean media, the “Key Resolve” drill rehearses different scenarios for a possible conflict on the Korean peninsula using computer-simulated exercises. The U.S. and South Korean troops will be used to test the scenarios.

Also continuing are large-scale North Korean drills that Seoul says involve the army, navy and air force. The South Korean defense ministry said there have been no military activities it considers suspicious.

The North has threatened to nullify the armistice several times in times of tension with the outside world, and in 1996 the country sent hundreds of armed troops into a border village. The troops later withdrew.

Despite the heightened tension, there were signs of business as usual Monday.

The two Koreas continue to have at least two working channels of communication between their militaries and aviation authorities.

One of those hotlines was used Monday to give hundreds of South Koreans approval to enter North Korea to go to work. Their jobs are at the only remaining operational symbol of joint inter-Korean cooperation, the Kaesong industrial complex. It is operated in North Korea with South Korean money and knowhow and a mostly North Korean work force.

The North Korean rhetoric escalated as the U.N. Security Council last week approved a new round of sanctions over Pyongyang’s latest nuclear weapons test Feb. 12.

Analysts said that much of the bellicosity is meant to shore up loyalty among citizens and the military for North Korea‘s young leader, Kim Jong Un.

“This is part of their brinksmanship,” said Daniel Pinkston, a Seoul-based expert on North Korea with the International Crisis Group think tank. “It’s an effort to signal their resolve, to show they are willing to take greater risks, with the expectation that everyone else caves in and gives them what they want.”

Part of …read more
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