[The jointly operated industrial complex, in the North Korean town of Kaesong, had
continued to operate for days since the North threatened to shut it down. But
on Wednesday, more than 480 South Koreans who showed up at a border crossing
were denied permission to cross, said the Unification Ministry of South Korea,
which is in charge of relations with the North. North Korea promised to allow
861 South Koreans currently staying in Kaesong to return home if they wished,
the ministry said. But with no replacements arriving, only 33 immediately
decided to return home.]
By David E. Sanger and Choe Sang-Hun
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Jung Yeon-Je/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Trucks from South Korea were turned back after being banned
from entering a jointly operated industrial park in Kaesong,
North Korea, on Wednesday.
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Pentagon officials say that the decision to rush a
system called THAAD — for Terminal High Altitude Area Defense — to Guam in
coming weeks was “a precautionary move to strengthen our regional defense
posture against the North Korean regional ballistic missile threat." But
its primary importance is that, once installed, the land-based system will free
up two Aegis-class missile-defense warships to be repositioned far closer to
the North Korean coast, to give President Obama more options to decide whether
to attempt to shoot down the North’s increasingly-sophisticated arsenal of
missiles, perhaps during a North Korean missile test.
“We haven’t made any decisions,” a senior administration
official said. “But we want as many options as possible.”
The North, angry over joint American-South Korean military
drills and a recent round of United Nations sanctions, has in recent weeks
threatened to strike at the United States, the South’s ally, in Guam, Hawaii
and the mainland United States. While analysts doubt the potency of the North’s
arsenal, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel responded Wednesday that the North’s
recent inflammatory language and actions presented “a real and clear danger” to
the interests of South Korea, Japan and the
United States.
Last month, Mr. Hagel announced that the United States
would bolster its missile defenses in Alaska and California. But that process
will take several years; the THAAD is intended to deter a more current threat to
Guam, which is within the North’s missile range.
The jointly operated industrial complex, in the North
Korean town of Kaesong, had continued to operate for days since the North
threatened to shut it down. But on Wednesday, more than 480 South Koreans who
showed up at a border crossing were denied permission to cross, said the
Unification Ministry of South Korea, which is in charge of relations with the
North. North Korea promised to allow 861 South Koreans currently staying in
Kaesong to return home if they wished, the ministry said. But with no
replacements arriving, only 33 immediately decided to return home.
The eight-year-old industrial park, on the western edge of
the border of the two Koreas, produced $470 million worth of goods last year,
helping provide a badly needed source of hard currency for the cash-strapped
North. It generates more than $92 million a year in wages for 53,400 North
Koreans employed by 123 textile and other labor-intensive South Korean
factories there.
It was not the first time that North Korea had disrupted
the park’s operation. It blocked cross-border traffic three times in 2009, once
for three days, out of anger over joint military drills by South Korean and
American troops. That blockade was lifted when the military exercises ended.
The current American-South Korean military drills are to continue until the end
of April.
China’s deputy foreign minister, Zhang Yesui, met with the
ambassadors of the two Koreas and the United States on Tuesday to express
serious concern over the situation on the Korean Peninsula, Hong Lei, a
spokesman of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said Wednesday.
“The improvement of relationships between the two Koreas,
as well as their reconciliation and cooperation, are conducive to the peace and
stability on the peninsula,” he said. “We hope the two Koreas can resolve the
relevant issues through dialogue and consultation.”
Meanwhile, the United States and South Korea are entering
the final stretch of long negotiations over another highly sensitive nuclear
issue: South Korea’s own request for American permission to enrich uranium and
reprocess spent nuclear fuel.
The request comes at a delicate time. South Korea insists
that it needs to produce fuel for its fast-expanding nuclear energy industry
and reduce its almost-full nuclear waste storage. But the same technologies can
also used to make material for nuclear weapons.
In 1972, when Washington transferred nuclear material,
equipment and technical expertise to help build South Korea’s nuclear energy
industry, it had Seoul commit itself not to enrich or reprocess. That deal
expires in March 2014, and both sides are racing to work out a revised and
updated version; it has to be submitted to Congress before the summer for
approval.
South Korea has lingering American misgivings to dispel.
The current president’s father, the late military strongman Park Chung-hee,
feared being abandoned by the United States when then-President Jimmy Carter
talked about withdrawing American troops from South Korea in the 1970s, and tried
to build nuclear weapons. Washington got wind of the effort and blocked it. The
South’s scientists dabbled in reprocessing in 1982 and enrichment in 2000 and
failed to declare their activities to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
For Washington and Congress, allowing South Korea to
develop either the enrichment or reprocessing technologies would mark a rare
exception, one that nonproliferation advocates said would set a bad precedent,
undermine Washington’s global efforts to curb the spread of such activities and
further undermine American efforts to persuade North Korea and Iran to give up
its nuclear programs.
Secretary of State John Kerry and his South Korean
counterpart, Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, discussed the long-running South
Korean desire in Washington on Tuesday and said they will take it up again when
Mr. Kerry visits Seoul next week. Both sides hope for a compromise before
President Obama and President Park Geun-hye of South Korea are scheduled to
meet in Washington in May. Ms. Park made winning Americans concessions on the
issue one of her top campaign pledges for her December election.
“I am very hopeful, and I think the foreign minister shares
this hope, that this can be resolved before the visit of President Park,” Mr.
Kerry said in a joint news conference with Mr. Yun on Tuesday. The South Korean
minister called for a “mutually beneficial, timely, and forward-looking”
solution.
In South Korea, where people remember their recent history
of war and foreign occupation and feel squeezed by bigger countries they
consider bullies, popular support has often surged for arming the country with
nuclear weapons — especially when people became doubtful of the American
commitment to defend their country or when the North’s threats intensify, as they
have in recent weeks.
“When the thug in the neighborhood has gotten himself a
brand-new machine-gun, we can’t defend our home with a stone,” Chung Mon-joon,
a ruling party leader and vocal champion for “a nuclear sovereignty” for South
Korea, recently said, referring to the North Korean nuclear threat. “At a time
of crisis, we are not 100 percent sure whether the Americans will cover us with
its nuclear umbrella.”
But such a call, even if it reflected popular sentiments,
has never become a national debate, tamped down by unequivocal rebuttals from
government policy-makers. And the United States flew nuclear-capable B-52 and
B-2 bombers in recent training sorties over the Korean Peninsula, demonstrating
its commitment to a nuclear umbrella for the South Korean ally.
David E. Sanger reported from Washington and
Choe Sang-hun from Seoul. Mark Landler and Thom Shanker contributed reporting
from Washington, and Patrick Zuo from Beijing.