North Korea bans workers from South entering border factory site

The move came a day after Pyongyang announced it would restart its long-dormant plutonium reactor and increase production of nuclear weapons material.

The bid to bar South Koreans from entering the Kaesong factory park, the last remaining symbol of detente between the rivals, comes amid increasing hostility from Pyongyang.

It has threatened to stage nuclear and missile strikes on Seoul and Washington and said that the armistice ending the 1950s Korean War is void.

Seoul’s Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Hyung-suk said Pyongyang was allowing South Koreans to return home from Kaesong, but that about 480 South Koreans who had planned to travel to the park yesterday were being refused entry.

He said North Korea cited recent political circumstances on the Korean Peninsula when they delivered their decision to block South Korean workers from entering Kaesong.

The two sides do not allow their citizens to travel to the other country without approval, but an exception has previously been made each day for the South Koreans working at Kaesong.

The Korean Peninsula is technically in a state of war because the Korean War ended in a truce not a peace treaty. North Korea is angry about current South Korea-US military drills and new UN sanctions over its February 12 nuclear test, its third.

Dozens of South Korean firms run factories in the border town of Kaesong. Using North Korea’s cheap, efficient labour, the Kaesong complex produced $470m (£310m) worth of goods last year.

Pyongyang threatened last week to shut down the park, which is run with mostly North Korean labour and South Korean know-how.

It expressed anger over South Korean media reports that said North Korea would not shut the park because it is a source of crucial hard currency for the impoverished country.