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South Korea Warns North of ‘Grave Measure’ in Factory Dispute
On Anniversary, North Korea’s Bluster Begins Again
(about 7 hours later)
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea gave North Korea until Friday to respond to its proposal for dialogue or face a “grave measure” by the South on the future of a jointly operated industrial complex that has been the only remaining symbol of economic cooperation between the two Koreas.
SEOUL, South Korea — On an anniversary known for military showmanship, North Korean generals on Thursday declared that their forces were ready to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles and kamikaze-like nuclear attacks at the United States if threatened.
A statement Thursday from the South’s Unification Ministry stopped short of saying whether it was contemplating withdrawing 176 South Korean managers still remaining in the factory park in North Korea or even terminating the joint economic project, which had survived years of political tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula.
“Stalwart pilots, once given a sortie order, will load nuclear bombs, instead of fuel for return, and storm enemy strongholds to blow them up,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency quoted its Air and Anti-Air Force Commander, Ri Pyong-chol, as saying during a ceremony in observance of the anniversary of the founding of the North Korean People’s Army.
The future of the Kaesong Industrial Complex, located in the North Korean border town of the same name, has been in doubt ever since North Korea pulled out all its 53,000 workers on April 9 in anger over joint American-South Korean military drills. It also blocked South Korean managers or supplies from entering the economic zone.
Another general, Strategic Rocket Force Commander Kim Rak-gyom reiterated the claim that the North is “one click away from pushing the launch button.”
The number of South Korean managers dwindled from the usual 900 to 176 as of Wednesday as supplies were running out. On Thursday, the South Korean government said that those who still stayed in Kaesong, hoping for the reopening of the complex, would not be able to remain much longer.
“If the U.S. imperialists and their followers dare make a pre-emptive attack, they will be made to keenly realize what a real nuclear war and real retaliatory blows are like,” he said.
It said when it tried on Wednesday to send a letter to the North through the border asking it to allow emergency food and medical supplies to be sent to South Koreans in Kaesong, the North did not even accept the document.
Threats to launch nuclear strikes and warnings of “nuclear holocaust” have become common since the country’s latest nuclear test, its third, in February. Although North Korea is believed to have a small nuclear weapons arsenal, most analysts doubt it could follow through on threats to deliver them to the United States by missile.
On Thursday, it again proposed an official dialogue with the North and demanded the North respond by Friday.
One American intelligence agency recently said it had “moderate confidence” that the North had mastered the technology of building a weapon that could fit on a missile warhead, but the Obama administration said that was not the consensus among the United States 15 other intelligence agencies. Most analysts believe Mr. Kim is using the nuclear bluster to consolidate the support of his people and bolster his leverage in dealing with Washington and its allies.
“Our government’s position remains firm and unchanged — that the Kaesong factory park should be safely maintained and developed,” said Kim Hyung-suk, a Unification Ministry spokesman, in a nationally televised statement. “But we make it clear that if they again reject our proposal for government-to-government talk, we will have no option but to take a grave measure.”
The threatening statements come after days of relative quiet that followed weeks of warnings of dire consequences if the United States and South Korea provoked the North. Mr. Kim’s regime was already angered by United Nations sanctions punishing it for the nuclear test in February and by particularly robust joint exercises by the American and South Korea militaries.
He said he would leave it to the “imagination” what that measure might be.
The timing of the latest threats appeared to be tied to the military anniversary. North Korea’s military, the backbone of Kim Jong-un’s dynastic rule, has traditionally used the date to swear its loyalty to the Kim family and vent its anti-American vitriol.
His comment came a day after President Park Geun-hye of South Korea said she had no intention of succumbing to North Korea’s “unreasonable” demands over the Kaesong complex.
During the military ceremony on Thursday, Mr. Kim saluted columns of soldiers marching past, and airplanes made demonstration flights, the North Korean news agency said.
“I want an early resolution of this but my government will never try to patch things up, as they used to do in the past, with hurried compromises like an unprincipled provision of aid,” she was quoted as saying in a meeting with senior editors of domestic media on Wednesday.
Earlier Thursday, South Korea said it was giving the North until Friday to respond to its proposal for dialogue about the two countries’ joint industrial park or face a “grave measure” by the South. The statement by the Unification Ministry stopped short of saying whether South Korea was contemplating withdrawing 176 South Korean managers still remaining in the factory park in North Korea or even terminating the joint economic project, which has survived years of political tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula.
There was no immediate response from the North. It had earlier rejected the South’s proposal for dialogue, calling it a “cunning trick,” and said that South Koreans in Kaesong were free to leave. It also demanded that the South first apologize for taunting its leadership.
The future of the Kaesong Industrial Complex, located in the North Korean border town of the same name, has been in doubt ever since North Korea pulled out its 53,000 workers April 9. It also blocked supplies and South Korean managers who were south of the border from entering the economic zone.
North Korea has said its decision to suspend operations at Kaesong was also due to insults from South Korean media analysts who have suggested that North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, would not dare shutter the Kaesong complex because he did not want to lose an important source of badly needed hard currency.
The number of South Korean managers at Kaesong dwindled from the usual 900 to 176 as of Wednesday as supplies were running out. On Thursday, the South Korean government said that those who were still in Kaesong, hoping for the reopening of the complex, would not be able to remain much longer.
The factory complex began operating in late 2004. The 123 South Korean factories there produced $470 million worth of textiles and other labor-intensive products last year and provided the North with $90 million a year in wages for its workers.
A spokesman for the government said that when it had tried Wednesday to send a letter to the North asking permission to send emergency food and medical supplies to the South Koreans in Kaesong, the North had not even accepted the document.
The complex, where South Korea’s manufacturing know-how was paired with cheap North Korean labor and the North’s Communist authorities experienced the first taste of South Korean capitalism, has been held up as a test case for how reunification of the two Koreas might look.
As relations deteriorated in recent years, however, the industrial park has also become a contentious issue in South Korea. Some conservative South Koreans argued that the complex extended a lifeline to the North Korean regime, which the South blamed for military provocations, including the 2010 sinking of a South Korean warship that killed 46 sailors.
For several weeks, tensions have remained high on the peninsula as the North issued a torrent of threats to attack the United States and South Korea out of anger over United Nations sanctions imposed for its February nuclear test.
The North Korean blockade pushed many of the South Korean companies that owned factories in Kaesong to the brink of bankruptcy. The South Korean government on Wednesday offered financial aid for those companies.
On Thursday, South Korean factory owners issued a joint statement urging the two Korean governments to live up to their promise to protect investments in Kaesong.
The factory park was a child of South Korea’s now-defunct “Sunshine Policy” of encouraging economic cooperation with the North to ease military tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula. Dozens of South Korean companies were encouraged to relocate their labor-intensive factories to Kaesong to use lower-cost North Korean workers.
