SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – South Korea’s sudden withdrawal from a factory park in North Korea is a severe blow for the South Korean businesses that populated it, but is unlikely to make much difference to the North’s decrepit economy despite being a stern diplomatic measure.
Aiming to punish North Korea for a rocket launch on Sunday, South Korea’s government said earlier this week it will shut down the Kaesong industrial complex. It accused North Korea of using the cash it earns from South Korean involvement in the rare venture between the two Koreas to finance its weapons programs.
Pyongyang responded Thursday by announcing a military takeover of the complex near the border of the two countries, ordering all South Koreans to leave, and seizing the possible bounty of equipment and assets left behind.
North Korea, impoverished due to the isolation imposed by decades of authoritarian rule, earned $560 million from the park since it started operating in 2004, including $120 million last year alone, Seoul says.
South Koreans were divided by their government’s decision. The project that combined cheap North Korean labor with the capital and technology of affluent South Korea has long been viewed both as a test of the potential for reunification of a peninsula divided by the 1950-53 Korean War and a symbol of intractable tension.