North Korea ratcheted up its threats to sever ties with South Korea, vowing yesterday to ban crossings at their shared border starting next month over what it calls Seoul’s confrontational stance.
The North’s military will “restrict and cut off all the overland passage” across the frontier beginning Dec. 1, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.
The report did not say how long the ban would remain in place. Prohibiting passage through the Demilitarized Zone would primarily affect South Korean firms operating factories in an inter-Korean business complex in Kaesong and would halt tours to the ancient city, which receives about 200 South Korean visitors daily.
PHOTO: AP
Another joint project in the North — tours to one of the region’s most famous sites, Diamond Mountain — has been stalled since the fatal shooting of a South Korean tourist in July.
South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Ho-nyeon expressed regret over the North’s decision. He said the threat would hurt reconciliation efforts.
“North Korea’s move is aimed at pressuring South Korea to shift its policy toward the North,” said Qiao Yuzhi, a North Korea expert at Peking University who is visiting Seoul.
He said the North is likely to only enforce the ban temporarily.
South Korean tour operator Hyundai Asan Corp said it has not received any notification from the North about halting its year-old program offering tours of Kaesong. More than 100,000 tourists, mostly South Koreans, have visited the city, which served as the capital of the ancient Koryo Dynasty that ruled Korea from 918 to 1392.
Kaesong is home to more than 80 South Korean factories that employ about 35,000 North Korean workers. Currently, about 1,600 South Koreans also live and work there, Hyundai Asan and the Unification Ministry said.
“There is no sign of tensions here, and our factory is working normally,” Kang Mi-wha, a South Korean manager at footwear maker Samduk Stafild, said by telephone from Kaesong.
The North has stepped up the rhetoric against the South in recent weeks, warning that it will attack the South and reduce it to “debris” if Seoul continues what it says are confrontational activities against it.
Last month, the North warned that it would expel South Koreans from Kaesong if propaganda leaflets critical of Pyongyang keep floating across the border. The two Koreas agreed in 2004 to stop decades of propaganda warfare, but South Korea says it cannot stop activists from sending leaflets into North Korea by balloon.
Inter-Korean relations “are at the crucial crossroads of existence and total severance,” KCNA said yesterday.
Seoul denies taking a hard-line stance toward the North.
A week ago, North Korean Lieutenant General Kim Yong-chol inspected the Kaesong complex and asked South Korean workers how long it would take for them to pull out, the Seoul government said.
Kim, the chief North Korean delegate to military talks with the South, informed his South Korean counterpart yesterday of the decision to restrict border travel, KCNA said. The North also said that it has agreed to let nuclear inspectors visit its main atomic complex and interview scientists — but refuses to let them take samples as part of any verification checklist.
The Foreign Ministry statement provides the first details from Pyongyang about last month’s negotiations with Assistant US Secretary of State Christopher Hill.
Hill went to Pyongyang early last month in a bid to rescue a disarmament-for-aid deal stalled over how to verify the North’s claims about its nuclear program.
Washington had requested soil samples, but North Korea says sampling was never part of the deal.
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