N. Korea expels team of S. Koreans for criticism
TOKYO - North Korea expelled a team of South Korean officials from its territory yesterday, a response to the South's increasingly tough criticism of its neighbor's record on human rights and nuclear proliferation.
For a month, the new president of South Korea has been warning North Korea to clean up its act on human rights and move quickly to get rid of nuclear weapons - if it wants more food aid and economic help from the South.
Communist North Korea, destitute and on the brink of a severe food shortage, made it abundantly clear that it does not want to be lectured to by South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, expelling 11 South Korean government officials from the Kaesong industrial zone, a booming factory park just north of the border. The park employs 24,000 North Koreans who work for 69 South Korean companies and is one of the few economic bright spots in the North.
After an emergency meeting in Seoul, presidential spokesman Lee Dong-kwan said the expulsion "was a very regrettable incident that could damage progress of economic cooperation between the South and the North."
The North should be more predictable in its behavior toward the South, Lee said. But he also made it clear that South Korea does not want the situation to deteriorate.
Eleven South Korean government officials left the Inter-Korean Economic Cooperation Consultation Office in Kaesong yesterday, and five civilians remained. Officials in Seoul said operations in the industrial zone would continue.
Still, the expulsion is the strongest signal since Lee took office at the end of last month that relations between the two Koreas are likely to be far more truculent than they have been since 2000.
Lee's predecessors, Roh Moo-hyun and Kim Dae-jung, presided over an era of dramatically improved ties with the North. The two leaders avoided almost any criticism of the Stalinist dictatorship of Kim Jong Il, while shipping the country large amounts of food and fertilizer.
Kim, in return, invited both presidents to summits in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.
Lee's government, in contrast, has said it will hold up economic aid until there is real progress on the North's promises to tell the outside world about the full extent of its nuclear programs.
