From Yonhap:
Hyundai Asan withdraws all workers, equipment from N.K.
South Korea’s Hyundai Asan, the North Korean business arm of the Hyundai Group, pulled its workers on Friday from the construction site of a separated family reunion center on North Korea’s Mount Geumgang.
The pullout follows an earlier notification from the communist state that the South Korean workers should withdraw from the construction site before Saturday.
A group of 24 workers returned to the country earlier in the day and an additional 104 workers were pulled out around 5:10 p.m., according to the company.
The withdrawal comes as the first visible sign of soured relations between the divided Koreas after North Korea launched seven ballistic missiles, including a long-range Taepodong-2, on July 5, despite strong opposition and appeals from the South.
Pyongyang said earlier in the week that it was no longer able to continue inter-Korean humanitarian projects, mainly Red Cross-sponsored programs to reunite North and South Korean families separated by the countries’ division.
The announcement came after Seoul said it would suspend humanitarian aid shipments to the impoverished North until the missile crisis is resolved.
North Korea accused the Seoul government of abandoning its northern brethren to please Washington and Tokyo, which spearheaded the passage of a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the North’s missile launches. The countries are apparently looking to impose additional sanctions.
South Korean Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok dismissed the accusation Thursday, saying the suspension of aid shipments was based on his country’s “own judgment.”
“The reason the government decided to suspend additional food and fertilizer aid was because the North aggravated the situation without considering our position or concerns,” the minister said in a regular press briefing.
The South Korean company, which is also the North’s business partner for a cross-border tour program to the North’s mountain resort, has been working to construct the 12-story separated family reunion center.
North Korea has agreed to allow two South Korean engineers to stay and continue with other business tasks while overlooking the incomplete facility, Yang said.
Another group of 29 Korean-Chinese workers would also be reassigned to the company’s tourism section in the North, according to Yang.
A Hyundai Asan spokesman said Thursday that tours to Mount Geumgang will continue.
The Koreas officially remain in a state of war since the fratricidal Korean War (1950-53) ended only with a cease-fire. More than 90,000 people from the South alone remain separated from their loved ones.
From Yonhap 7/20/2006 (via the Lost Nomad):
N. Korea tells S. Korean contractor to leave site of family reunion center
By Byun Duk-kun
North Korea has told a South Korean company to withdraw all of its workers from the construction site of a separated family reunion center before Friday, one day after it said it would no longer hold reunions of families separated by the division of the Koreas, the Unification Ministry said Thursday.
The one-day notice came in a letter faxed to Hyundai Asan, the North Korea business arm of the Hyundai Group, Yang Chang-seok, a spokesman for the Unification Ministry, told reporters.
“The main point of the letter was for Hyundai to halt its construction of the family reunion center on Mount Geumgang by Thursday and have all of its construction workers leave the site before the end of Friday,” Yang said.
The message was delivered Wednesday shortly after the head of North Korea’s Red Cross society told his South Korean counterpart that his country can no longer hold the humanitarian project to reunite separated families due to what it claimed to be Seoul’s submission to international calls for economic sanctions against the communist state.
Seoul suspended its humanitarian aid for the impoverished North after Pyongyang launched seven mid- and long-range missiles on July 5, despite repeated opposition and warnings from the South and its allies.
South Korea’s point man on North Korea, Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok, said in an earlier press briefing that North Korea’s decision to halt the humanitarian project was regrettable, but that the suspension of aid was not intended to be a sanction or to put pressure on the North.
The decision, according to Lee, was based on Seoul’s “own judgement” that the North has seriously undermined security and peace on the Korean Peninsula by test-firing the missiles despite Seoul’s concerns.
The U.N. Security Council on Saturday adopted a resolution that condemned the North’s missile launches while prohibiting missile-related dealings with the Stalinist state.
Lee said the U.N. resolution must be interpreted “strictly,” a repeat of his opposition against imposing other economic sanctions on the North.
Currently, 150 South Korean workers are working at the North’s mountain resort to build the 13-story reunion facility, according to Yang.
“We are moving toward pulling the workers out,” he said.
The divided Koreas have held 14 rounds of the Red Cross-sponsored reunions between separated families since the historic inter-Korean summit in 2000.
More than 90,000 people from the South alone still remain divided from their loved ones on the other side of the heavily fortified inter-Korean border, according to the ministry.
The Koreas officially remain in a state of war since the 1950-53 Korean War ended only with a cease-fire, not a peace treaty.
