Korea Border Will Be Closed, North Says
North Korea said on Wednesday that it will close its border with South Korea on Dec. 1. The step would be its most hostile act yet, following months of escalating criticism of Seoul's decision to tie economic assistance to arms reduction in the North.
If the North follows through, the border closing likely would force the closure of the two countries' largest joint development project, an industrial park in the North where about 30,000 North Koreans work for South Korean companies.
South Korean government officials played down that prospect, however, and characterized Wednesday's statement, made through North Korea's state-run news agency, as just another in a series of criticisms and threats that turned strident this year following the election of conservative politician Lee Myung-bak as president in the South.
The North also has expressed outrage at leaflets that North Korean defectors and democracy activists in the South have floated across the border by balloon in recent months. The leaflets criticize North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, who is believed to have been incapacitated by illness since mid-August.
The South's Unification Ministry, which is in charge of relations with North Korea, said Pyongyang hadn't communicated directly on the border-closing prospect. 'If the North carries it out, it would have a negative impact on what has been achieved in inter-Korean relations,' a ministry spokesman said.
With the threat, North Korea appears ready to risk economic pain now in hopes of extracting more money from the South to reopen the border later, analysts said.
Jo Dong-ho, an economist at Ewha University who studies North Korea, says the gamble makes sense because leaders in Pyongyang know that South Koreans want to preserve a connection between the two countries.
'If I am the president of South Korea, I cannot say I'm not interested in the improvement of inter-Korean relations,' Mr. Jo says. 'Some day in the future, I would have to resume the dialogue. If North Korea closes now, then South Korea would have to give more to have the border open again.'
North Korea has used similar tactics for years to extract economic assistance from the U.S. and other countries that want it to give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Separately on Wednesday, North Korea challenged part of a U.S. portrayal of an agreement the two countries made last month to verifying denuclearization steps taken by the North. The North said it wouldn't allow soil samples to be taken at its nuclear plant, as the U.S. had said when it announced the deal.
After Mr. Lee took office earlier this year, South Korea made the expansion of its economic projects in the North conditional on progress by the North toward giving up nuclear weapons. That marked a sharp change from the policy of Mr. Lee's immediate predecessor, Roh Moo-hyun, who promised to undertake billions of dollars worth of projects in the North with no strings attached.
For months, North Korea harshly criticized Mr. Lee as a 'traitor' and 'reckless.' Last week, Pyongyang military officials made a surprise visit to the industrial park built and operated by South Korean firms just inside North Korea. Among the questions the military officials asked, according to South Korean media, was how long it would take for the South Korean firms to leave.
Wednesday's announcement appeared to come from North Korea's military, referred to by the acronym KPA, for Korea People's Army. 'We officially inform the south side that the actual crucial measure taken by the KPA to strictly restrict and cut off all the overland passages through the military demarcation line will take effect from Dec. 1,' the announcement said, using the North Korean custom of describing South Korea not as a country but as side of its own country that it doesn't control.
For North Korea to carry out the plan, it would need to seal off only two crossing points through the 3.2- kilometer-wide demilitarized zone that has divided the countries since the Korean War ceasefire of 1953.
One crossing point, on the east side of the peninsula, goes to a mountain resort called Kumgang, which has been largely unused since July, when a North Korean soldier shot and killed a South Korean tourist there.
The other, on the west side, goes to Kaesong, a North Korean city of about one million people, where South Korea in 2002 built an industrial park now used by about 70 small companies. The firms hire North Korean workers for wages of about $70 a month, a sizable portion of which goes to the North's government.
South Korea has spent about $400 million to build the industrial park. Companies in the park this year are expected to generate between $200 million and $300 million in economic output, a small fraction of South Korea's nearly $1 trillion economy. |
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