YONHAP (South Korea), BBC (UK)
PYONYANG – North Korea blocked South Korean workers from accessing a jointly operated industrial park on Wednesday.
North Korea banned South Korean workers from crossing the border to work at the inter-Korean Kaesong Industrial Complex, only allowing about 800 South Koreans who stayed overnight at the border town to return home, reports Yonhap news agency.
The move comes four days after North Korea threatened to shut down the complex, in retaliation against United Nations sanctions and joint U.S.-South Korea military drills.
The industrial park is home to more than 120 factories, employing more than 50,000 North Koreans and several hundred managers from South Korea, reports BBC News. Permission to cross the border into the complex is permitted on a daily basis, with workers allowed to stay overnight.
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The Kaesong industrial region, 10 kilometers north of the Korean Demilitarized Zone. Source: ASDFGH/GNU
Pyongyang has been increasingly threatening towards South Korea and the U.S. over the past few weeks, notably vowing to restart a mothballed nuclear plant held to be the source for plutonium for North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
