Stranded South Korean workers cleared to leave North

Reuters via Yahoo ^ | 03/16/09 | Jack Kim

[Abathar]

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea said it would allow hundreds of South Koreans stranded at an industrial park in the North to return home on Monday, but Pyongyang showed no signs of lifting a blockade on the joint project.

North Korea restricted access to the complex of 101 South Korean firms on Friday, just days after cutting off a military hotline usually used to process daily passage to Kaesong park which is just minutes north of the border.

The industrial zone is still functioning, but at a minimum level. North Korea has repeatedly blocked traffic crossing the border into the estate.

South Korea's Unification Ministry said a North Korean military official had served notice that 453 people would be allowed to return to the South from Kaesong.

"The people who were scheduled to return today will all be coming back," Unification Ministry deputy spokeswoman Lee Jong-joo told a briefing.

Those returning include 233 who were stranded since Friday and nearly 200 stuck since Saturday, she said. North Korea had so far not issued permission to more than 600 people from the South waiting to enter the zone, Lee said.

Pyongyang's decision to restrict access to the industrial zone follows months of angry rhetoric against the South and President Lee Myung-bak, who last year ended years of no-questions-asked aid to the impoverished North.

The North's anger intensified last week when South Korea and the United States started a series of military drills.

The complex of South Korean firms at Kaesong was opened in 2004 and employs 38,000 low-wage North Koreans. It churns out light-industrial goods such as pots, watches, apparel.

To close down the project by shutting down the border completely would mean cutting off one of the North's few sources of foreign currency and scare off potential investors, analysts said.

[Abathar]

Who would be so stupid as to invest in a business located in North Korea? Do they think that a signature on a piece of paper will keep their employees or assets safe from these people?

What a bunch of idiots, I wonder what the workers are paid (or allowed to keep I should say) and how much goes to the military. I would boycott any business that I found was selling products produced in North Korea.