Ok Sung-seok, Vice-President of the Association of Companies at Kaesong Industrial Complex, hugs an employee working at the North Korean border yesterday.
SEOUL: North Korea barred delivery of supplies to South Koreans in the closed Kaesong industrial zone yesterday, as the South’s president said it was time to stop rewarding Pyongyang’s provocations.
A delegation of 10 businessmen representing 123 South Korean firms in Kaesong had applied to travel to the zone, with food and other necessities for their staff and to inspect their facilities.
“North Korea informed us that the request for a visit... had been turned down,” Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Hyung-Seok said. “It is regrettable that the North has rejected the request and disallowed a humanitarian measure.”
North Korea has blocked access to Kaesong, 10km inside its border, since April 3 amid soaring military tensions on the Korean peninsula.
South Koreans in Kaesong at the time were told they could leave when they wanted, but as of yesterday there were 200 remaining.
The North withdrew its 53,000 workers and suspended operations in the zone on April 8.
“Humanitarian problems are bound to worsen as days go by,” Kim said.
Three cars crossed back into South Korea from Kaesong, carrying bundles of products and personal belongings squeezed into every available space and tied onto the roof. Supplies included boxes of rice, medicine and the Korean food staple, kimchi.
Kaesong was established in 2004 as a symbol of inter-Korean cooperation.
The North said the South was seeking to shift responsibility for Kaesong’s closure, which Pyongyang insists was forced by Seoul’s policy of “confrontation” and “war-mongering” statements.
“The puppet regime can never escape from the criminal responsibility for putting Kaesong in this grave situation,” the North’s state body in charge of special economic zones said.
The South is “clinging to sanctions against the North, while bringing in massive volumes of new war machines and madly engaging in exercises for a war of aggression while prattling about dialogue,” it said.
Seoul’s offers of talks to find a way out of the current impasse have been dismissed by the North as a “crafty trick”.
Kaesong is a crucial hard currency source for the impoverished North, through taxes and revenues, and from its cut of the workers’ wages.
South Korean President Park Geun-Hye said Seoul would not be intimidated into a dialogue. “We must break the vicious cycle of holding negotiations and providing assistance if (North Korea) makes threats and provocations.”
Meanwhile, military leaders of South Korea and the US will hold talks this week on joint defence posture against North Korean threats and future operation structure.
The Japanese Ambassador to South Korea, Koro Bessho , urged Seoul strengthen military ties with Tokyo as a means of pressuring North Korea to back off its nuclear ambitions and coping with the North’s bellicose threats, South Korea’s News Agency (Yonhap) said.
He said Seoul, Tokyo and Washington must boost cooperation in northeast Asia in the face of a rising China as the US is shifting its diplomatic and security focus from Iraq and Afghanistan to Asia.
Seoul said it had agreed to buy a fleet of US Apache attack helicopters in a deal reported to be worth $1.5bn.
The Defence Acquisition Programme Administration said it would acquire 36 AH-64E Apache Guardian choppers from Boeing over three years from 2016.
It said the chopper has the ability to destroy tanks and armoured vehicles and would strengthen the South’s defences against provocation from the North.
South Korea will be the fourth country to buy the four-blade, twin-engine helicopter after the US, Taiwan and Saudi Arabia, Yonhap said.
The chopper will replace a fleet of AH-1 Cobra helicopters in service for decades in South Korea, officials said.
Agencies
