NK orders Gaeseong workers pulled out

Operations at S-N industrial park on `temporary' hold

By Kim Tae-gyu

North Korea said Monday it will shut down the inter-Korean joint industrial complex in Gaeseong and withdraw all its workers there.

According to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the ruling Workers’ Party secretary Kim Yang-gon visited the city to officially order the shutdown of the last remaining major project between the two Koreas. It did not give an exact timeline for the move, although it could take place as early as today.

“As South Korean warmongers undermine our dignity and reduce the Gaeseong zone to a theater of internecine confrontation and northward provocations, we will tentatively close it and then decide whether it should keep operating,” the KCNA quoted Kim, who is in charge of the North’s South Korean operations, as saying.

“It entirely depends on South Korea’s attitudes how the situations will develop in the future ... All of our workers at the park will withdraw.”

Kim rebuffed the previous belief that the North will not scrap the “dollar-box” project, which is one of few sources of hard currency for the cash-stripped country.

“Economically speaking, we gain few benefits through the Gaeseong complex while the South savors many benefits. We conceded so much since we offered the strategically significant area,” Kim said.

Presidential spokesman Yoon Chang-jung said that Cheong Wa Dae instantly reported the announcement to President Park Geun-hye and held an emergency meeting chaired by top presidential aide for security affairs, Kim Jang-soo.

Political analysts point out that Pyongyang has come up with the strongest measure imaginable against Seoul as the former has kept the industrial park intact even in the midst of limited attacks against the latter.

However, they expect the North will not permanently shutter the industrial zone where more than 50,000 North Koreans work for 123 Southern firms, mostly household goods makers. About 500 Southern workers are still there.

The zone generates around $80 million a year in wages paid to the Northern government rather than directly to the workers.

“The temporary shutdown might continue for quite a long time. But the North won’t scrap the industrial complex for good because the regime is well aware of its significance,” said Chang Yong-seok, a researcher at the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies affiliated with Seoul National University.

“North Korea, which overly depends on China in terms of its economy, needs to diversify its revenue sources and the Gaeseong program is a good way to achieve that goal. Pyongyang cannot afford the luxury of losing it forever.”

Paik Hak-soon at the private Sejong Institute agreed.

“As a new leader who took power of late, Kim Jong-un might not want to start his period by embarking on a war or eliminating a long-standing inter-Korean program,” he said.

“What Pyongyang really wants is to have talks, not to permanently close the industrial zone. As it said, the ball is now in our court and it is time for us to give a proper response.”

They claimed that Seoul has been somewhat complacent.

Since last Wednesday, the North has barred the entry of South Korean workers and cargo into Gaeseong, just north of the heavily-fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).

After that move, presidential spokeswoman Kim Haing insinuated during a news briefing that North Korea would not give up its cash cow, citing several past examples where the communist country quickly normalized its operations after any crisis.