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Hundreds to quit estate after NKorea tightens border curbs
AFP - Wednesday, December 3
SEOUL (AFP) - - Hundreds of South Koreans working at a Seoul-funded industrial estate in North Korea were to pull out Tuesday after the communist state clamped down on border crossings, officials said.
South Korea, which says the restrictions will hit production at the showpiece Kaesong estate, appealed to the North for talks "at any time, any place and at any level" to settle differences.
The tight border restrictions which began Monday follow months of angry protests by Pyongyang against Seoul's new firmer policy on cross-border ties.
The North has said it will give only 880 South Korean managers and officials permits to travel to the estate.
This is about half the number South Korea says is needed to keep operations going at the complex, which was built as a symbol of reconciliation but is now the victim of worsening relations.
In addition, the border now opens only six times a day compared to 19 previously. A cross-border cargo train service and a popular day tour have been suspended indefinitely.
The North has indicated it does not want to shut down the Kaesong estate, which earns it millions of dollars a year. Some 35,000 of its people earning about 70 dollars a month produce items there such as watches, clothes, shoes and kitchenware for 88 South Korean firms.
"As of this morning, a total of 1,039 South Koreans are in Kaesong and 501 of them have no permission to stay," said South Korean unification ministry spokesman Kim Ho-Nyoun.
The 501 would return home Tuesday and Wednesday, he said. Hundreds of others had already quit the estate last week in anticipation of the crackdown.
South Korea's conservative President Lee Myung-Bak, who took office in February, has ended the decade-long "sunshine" engagement policy of his liberal predecessors.
Critics said it cost tens of millions of dollars and failed to bring about change in the North.
Lee has linked major economic aid to progress in the North's nuclear disarmament. He has said he will take a second look at summit agreements reached with the North under his predecessors -- a stance which enrages Pyongyang.
"We propose to the North that (we) open talks at any time, any place and at any level. We hope the North will respond positively," Unification Minister Kim Ha-Joong said in a speech at a forum.
The North is also fuming at propaganda leaflets floated across the border by rights groups, and at Seoul's decision to censure its human rights record.
Rights activists Tuesday launched more gas balloons carrying the flyers despite pleas to stop from the unification ministry.
Scuffles broke out with left-leaning critics, who tried to block the operation on the grounds that it is further damaging relations.
Only about 10,000 of the planned 100,000 leaflets were dispatched.
Park Hee-Tae, chairman of Lee's ruling Grand National Party, urged the North not to shut down Kaesong, which he said played a role in improving the security situation between the two sides.
"The North is resorting to its typical brinksmanship but we hope the North will stop short of jumping over the edge," he told reporters.
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