N. Korea suspends Kaesong tours, historic train link

(ATTN: UPDATES throughout with more background, quote by expert)
By Shim Sun-ah
SEOUL, Nov. 24 (Yonhap) -- North Korea said on Monday it will suspend tours to
Kaesong, halt cross-border rail services and halve the number of South Koreans in
a joint industrial complex in the same North Korean city early next week in
protest at Seoul's tough policy toward Pyongyang.
The North will also eject more South Korean personnel and vehicles from the joint
Mount Geumgang resort and the Kaesong complex, according to a statement by the
North's military carried by the country's official Korean Central News Agency.
All the retaliatory measures will be go into effect on Dec. 1, the statement said.
However, the measures excluded shutting down the Kaesong complex, a symbol of
inter-Korean rapprochement and, for the impoverished communist country, a key
source of foreign currency, according to a separate letter sent to the firms and
unveiled by Seoul officials.
"The South Korean puppets are still hell-bent on the treacherous and
anti-reunification confrontational racket," the statement said.
Eighty-eight small-sized South Korean garment and other labor-intensive plants
were operating in Kaesong, located just north of the heavily armed border, as of
the middle of this month. The businesses employ more than 36,000 North Korean and
1,200 South Korean workers.
Monday's announcement is the "first step to cope with the prevailing grave
situation," the statement said.
Pyongyang had warned earlier this month that it would restrict overland passages
across the inter-Korean border starting Dec. 1, without elaborating on the exact
moves it would take. Pyongyang closed its Red Cross mission and direct phone
links at the truce village of Panmunjom after the warning.
Inter-Korean relations have soured since the conservative South Korean President
Lee Myung-bak took office in February. Lee has vowed that the expansion of
inter-Korean projects will only follow North Korea's nuclear disarmament. The
North has expelled all South Korean government officials from the resort and the
industrial complex a month after the government's launch.
South Korea suspended tours to the resort mountain immediately after a North
Korean soldier shot dead a South Korean housewife who was touring the resort in
July. The joint tour program to Kaesong continued to run normally however,
despite the tension. The total number of tourists to Kaesong broke the 100,000
mark in October, nearly 10 months after the program began.
The rail link across the western part of the demilitarized zone began its regular
service last December for the first time in almost 50 years, but it recently has
been running almost empty.
The North's statement said they would "strictly restricting or shut" border
crossings by all South Koreans into the two joint areas for discussions on
economic cooperation and impose "more strict order and discipline" for the
passage and entry to those areas.
Stringent sanctions will follow any violators of the measures, it added.
"The prospect of the inter-Korean relations will entirely depend on the attitude
of the south Korean authorities," the statement warned, stressing that the North
Korean military never makes 'empty talk.'
Analysts say the North's plans to restrict cross-border traffic, if carried out,
would practically cripple even civilian exchanges between the two Koreas, which
had been unaffected by their tense political ties.
"North Korea came out with the suspension of Kaesong tour, a measure that might
incur damage to itself, above all other measures," said Koh You-hwan, a North
Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University. "This signals the North's willingness
to cut all civilian exchanges, too," he said.
Pyongyang will watch and see South Korea's response in the coming days,
maintaining pressure on Seoul to change its policy, he forecast.
In the two different letters sent to the South's private Kaesong Industrial
District Management Committee and South Korean plants in Kaesong, North Korea
also announced a plan to halve the number of South Korean workers there,
according to Kim Ho-nyoun, spokesman for Seoul's Unification Ministry that
handles cross-border affairs.
North Korea, however, decided to ensure industrial activities by the plants since
it does not want them to be a scapegoat of Seoul's "reckless confrontational
policy" and in consideration of financial difficulties of the mostly small-sized
firms, the letters said.
The North said in the other letter to the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency
that the first-ever inter-Korean joint office in Kaesong would be closed and the
remaining six South Korean staffers there will be forced out.
The two Koreas opened the landmark joint office in October 2005 to smooth
civilian economic cooperation projects but it has not operated normally since the
North ejected 11 South Korean government officials there in March.
The North sent similar letters of notice to Hyundai Asan, operator of the Kaesong
the Mount Geumgang tour programs, and two other South Korean firms engaged in
joint ventures with the communist nation.
North Korea is especially upset at Seoul's reluctance to carry out a slew of
cross-border economic projects that were agreed upon in the historic summits of
2000 and 2007. Those projects would require massive South Korean investment in
the impoverished communist state.
North Korea has also protested the spreading of anti-Pyongyang leaflets by South
Korean activist groups. South Korea's large-scale war exercises with the U.S.
military and the South's participation as a sponsor of the U.N. resolution on
North Korea human rights this year further agitated the relations.
The North's announcement came on the same day that the chiefs of the South's
plants operating in Kaesong visited the North Korean city for talks with North
Korean officials. The topics discussed and the identities of the North Koreans
attending the meeting were not known.
The South Koreans were accompanied by heads and other senior members of the
private Kaesong Management Committee and their industrial interest body.
The outcome of the meeting will be released after they return from the one-day
trip, according to the Unification Ministry spokesman.
sshim@yna.co.kr
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