04/30/2013, 00.00
KOREA
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Pyongyang blocks seven managers from South for "administrative reasons"

Withdrawal overnight of South Korean workers from the Kaesong industrial complex, closed unilaterally from the North at the beginning of April. Some supervisors remain who have to pay salaries and bills for April: but the truck carrying the cash blocked at the North Korean border.

Seoul (AsiaNews / Agencies) - North Korea has blocked 7 citizens from the South inside the Kaesong Industrial Zone for not paying workers' wages and phone bills, but at the same time it will not allow cash to enter the area, where citizens from both sides of the peninsula try to live together and work together. This is the latest move in a back and forth of provocations and threats, involving Seoul and Pyongyang for about two months  .

The last South Korean workers left the joint industrial zone in Kaesong, once a symbol of inter-Korean economic cooperation, overnight: According to the South Korean Ministry of Unification " the total withdrawal of South Korean workers from the complex under joint management was completed" .

The 43 workers who crossed the border shortly after midnight, however, were forced to leave the 7 supervisors behind them, stopped by the North over unresolved administrative issues: missing March salaries, industrial taxes and phone bills.

However, since the area has been closed since April 3 on the orders of Pyongyang, the South Koreans do not have access to cash sent to them by the government: it is on a truck that security guards will not allow through. According to Cho Bong-hyun, a researcher at the IBK economy Research Institute in Seoul, "North Korea is being illogically stubborn, demanding payment while not allowing cash deliveries".

The closure of the inter-Korean industrial complex was unilaterally decided by Pyongyang in early April, the last act in a series of provocations and war propaganda. However, if it is not reopened the North Korean regime is likely to suffer most with estimated loses as 100 million dollars, the average of the profits generated from the complex annually.

 

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