North Korea has announced it would pull all its 53,000 workers out the Kaesong joint industrial zone with South Korea and temporarily shut the complex down. “We will pull out all our workers from the Kaesong Industrial Complex,” Kim Yang Gon, a senior ruling party official said in a statement on Monday carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. At the same time, Pyongyang “will temporarily suspend the operations in the zone and examine the issue of whether it will allow its existence or close it”, Kim added. Al Jazeera’s Harry Fawcett, reporting from Seoul, said the North had pulled its workers due to the “warmongers”, a reference to the US and its ally South Korea. “So far, this is a temporary suspension. The North has said it is reviewing whether to shut it down. It should be said that even a temporary shutdown looks pretty permanent as the complex is difficult to start up again,” Fawcett said. “We have spoken to several business owners operating in [Kaesong joint industrial zone] and they have said they cannot meet their orders and they face ruin.”
Imminent reversal: Also on Monday, South Korea’s Defence Ministry denied suggestions that a nuclear arms test was imminent in North Korea, saying reported movements around the reclusive country’s atomic site were routine, contradicting earlier government comments. The reversal came amid mounting speculation that North Korea will launch some sort of provocative action in coming days – an arms test or a missile launch – after weeks of bellicose threats against the South and the United States.
