14 February 2016•Update: 14 February 2016
By Alex Jensen
SEOUL
Seoul has tried to justify its withdrawal from a now abandoned joint factory park with its northern neighbor, claiming Sunday that Pyongyang used 70 percent of the money paid by South Korean firms towards workers' wages for weapon development,
Seoul's Unification Minister Hong Yong-pyo insisted Sunday that the move was justified, amid criticism from local opposition lawmakers that the South may have been too hasty when announcing Wednesday that it would temporarily withdraw from the Kaesong Industrial Complex.
"Any foreign currency earned in North Korea is transferred to the Workers' Party, where the money is used to develop nuclear weapons or missiles, or to purchase luxury goods," the minister claimed during a televised interview aired by local broadcaster KBS.
Seoul's decision to pull its 124 firms from the facility just north of the inter-Korean border was an immediate response to the previous Sunday's long-range rocket launch by North Korea -- and its claimed fourth ever nuclear test a month before that.
Hong explained that the South had not acted sooner because "the international community recognized the significance" of the Kaesong complex, which was a key legacy of the first inter-Korean summit in 2000.
North Korea took the initiative Thursday by ordering the immediate departure of all South Korean Kaesong personnel and freezing their assets.
But even though Pyongyang is expected to turn the site into a military base, Hong asserted that "North Korea is clearly reeling from this."
Nearly 55,000 workers from the North were being employed by the complex's South Korean businesses at the time of its closure.
North Korea, already under global sanctions, is set to be hit by even more economic restrictions as a result of its nuclear weapon development in defiance of multiple United Nations resolutions.
