North Korea Occupies Business Park as Tension With Seoul Spikes

Just the crazy times we live in.

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If you understand time and superimpose that on a graph, you have good and bad periods.

We are entering into the bad period.

They stupid world leaders and politicians and their action/inaction are just a symptom of the times.

North Korea ordered its army to occupy an industrial park jointly run with South Korea and severed a military hotline as tensions between the countries remain high in the aftermath of Kim Jong Un’s nuclear test and long-range rocket launch.

North Korea will expel the remaining South Korean nationals from Gaeseong industrial park and freeze the assets of more than 120 South Korean companies operating there, the official Korean Central News Agency reported. The move came a day after South Korea said it was pulling out of the project to deny Pyongyang hard currency that could be used to fund its weapons program.

The occupation of Gaeseong shows Kim remains defiant in the face of international condemnation over the regime’s fourth nuclear test in January, followed by the Feb. 7 rocket launch. As the United Nations mulls additional sanctions, the U.S., Japan and South Korea have announced unilateral measures to punish the regime. Even China, Pyongyang’s most reliable ally, condemned Kim’s actions, while resisting calls for harsher sanctions that could destabilize its neighbor.

“The South Korean puppet group will experience what disastrous and painful consequences will be entailed by its action” of pulling out of Gaeseong, the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, the country’s top organ on cross-border relations, said Thursday in a statement carried by KCNA. President Park Geun Hye was “a fool” for ending operations at the complex and the suspension was a “a dangerous declaration of war,” the committee said.
Increasing Range

A decade of sanctions has failed to deter North Korean ambitions to develop a nuclear arsenal that Kim sees as his best defense against a U.S. invasion. While Pyongyang has increased the range of its ballistic missiles and has enough nuclear fuel to produce more devices, weapons experts say it is years away from being able to successfully launch a nuclear warhead on a long-range missile.
Gaeseong was the last vestige of economic cooperation between the two countries, and served to keep hope alive the nations would eventually reunite. Set up during a period of detente in the early 2000s, the manufacturing hub has been one of the biggest sources of hard currency for the isolated regime, with the salaries of 54,000 North Korean workers paid in U.S. dollars directly to Pyongyang.

Hard Cash

The project provided 616 billion won ($512 million) in cash to North Korea since operations began more than a decade ago, South Korea’s Unification Minister Hong Yong Pyo said Wednesday. The Seoul government and private citizens have also invested more than 1 trillion won in the park, he said.
This was the first time that South Korea had pulled out of Gaeseong. The complex was shuttered for five months in 2013 when North Korea -- slapped with tighter sanctions after a nuclear test that year -- held back its workers. The two countries pledged not to let Gaeseong be affected by political tensions when they agreed to reopen the site that year.
“The relations between the two Koreas will remain extremely sour for some time,” Kim Soo Am, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification, said by phone. “Once Gaeseong turns into a military area, it will be hard for the industrial complex to reopen as North Korea will be requesting strong compensation.”
About 200 South Koreans are believed to be affected by the expulsions. All South Korean property except private belongings will be frozen, North Korea said. The military hotline, a symbol of efforts to limit tensions between the countries, will be disconnected, it said.
Shares Plunge
North Korea denied that the money it gained from Gaeseong was used to develop its nuclear arms and missiles, and argued South Korea had more to lose from the suspension of the industrial park. On Wednesday a Gaeseong business group protested South Korea’s decision to withdraw, saying the announcement gave them little time to minimize losses.
While the government has said it will provide compensation, shares of companies operating at the park tumbled Thursday. Hyundai Merchant Marine Co. fell as much as 20 percent. Apparel maker Shinwon Corp. declined as much as 13 percent and watchmaker Romanson Co. dropped almost 15 percent.
Despite the stock selloff, developments would not likely put any pressure on South Korea’s credit rating, Fitch Ratings said.

Military Drills

“We view recent events as within the pattern of on-again, off-again relations between North and South Korea that we have seen for years,” Andrew Colquhoun, head of Asia-Pacific sovereigns, said in a statement Thursday.
Tensions with North Korea are set to stay high as the U.S. and South Korea prepare for the annual “Key Resolve” and “Foal Eagle” drills that Pyongyang calls a dress rehearsal for war. This year’s exercises will be the largest ever, a South Korean Defense Ministry official said. They will begin in either late February or early March.
South Korea also announced on Sunday that it had agreed to talks for the U.S. to deploy on its soil a ballistic missile-defense system called Thaad, a move opposed by China.
“My main concern is the whole thing is moving in a destabilizing direction,” Jim Walsh, a research associate in the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said by e-mail. “South Korea’s military doctrine has changed to a much more aggressive posture.”