Expect the 479 S Korean managers to be “expelled” tomorrow. The 4 Chinese managers will stay on with maintenance crews for the annual spring cleanup.
The 53,000 NK workers and their 100,000 family members will be quite busy doing spring planting.
The SK workers posed a major security risk for the NK Second Army Corps.
Sat photos show that all four army corps reserves mobilized for combat exercises over the past few months have turned in their weapons to their local Ministry of People’s Safety on 1, April and went back to work gathering fertilizer for spring planting.
Worker and Peasant Red Guards have to grow their own food. Sat photos show they did not carry weapons and backpacks in the fields or in the streets after 1, April as they are required when mobilized about 1, February. Now they are all carrying shovels and hoes.
When mobilized, the Guards relocate to caves and tunnels in the mountains, and now they have gone back to garrison.
Remember, the DPRK are absolute experts at incitement and propaganda. The S Koreans often deliver translations of NK statements that are not accurate.
NK statements always have a backdoor way out that lets them walk backward from hardline statements. That rarely comes through the SK translations.
Posters about self defense have been replaced with posters about the economy.
However, they have to do something after so much rhetoric, or his grip on power would be threatened. There could be lot of domestic political infighting in Pyongyang. Lately, their rhetoric is way over the top even for NK standard.
Backing down from it as if nothing happened would damage his political credibility, sowing serious doubts on his leadership.
I think this time around China did lean on NK. NK cannot count on automatic aid which allow them to survive. They can deal with no aid from the West and SK. It is not the first time. China used to fill the gap. This time it does not seem to be the case.