Seoul: North Korea yesterday rejected a South Korean demand for a promise not to take actions that may again disrupt operations at a joint industrial complex in its territory, calling it “ridiculous,” South Korean News Agency (Yonhap) said.
The complex in the North’s border city of Kaesong remains shut down since early April when North Korea, citing joint South-US military exercises, withdrew its 53,000 workers. South Korea responded by pulling out its manpower.
In testimony to a parliamentary committee earlier this week, Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae said that to reopen the complex, South Korea needs “a promise (from North Korea) that similar things will not be repeated in the future.”
Through its website Uriminzokkiri, North Korea claimed Seoul was to blame for the suspension of the park. The website reiterated Pyongyang’s stance that South “should first take measures to end provocative actions and military threats against us.”
South Korean President Park Geun-hye called on North to end a “vicious circle” in which it raises and reduces tensions to win diplomatic rewards and buy time to build up its nuclear arms programme.
In an address to a joint session of the US Congress, Park said she wanted to break the pattern in which the North “provokes a crisis” that draws sanctions from the international community, which later tries concessions to calm things down.
But the North taunted Park over what it called her humiliating US summit trip, saying she had been like a “bride dumped by her husband” on their wedding day. Agencies
