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The North's powerful military said Monday that it would suspend a joint tourism project and halt cross-border train services with South Korea starting next week, in protest at what it called Seoul's policy of confrontation.
In a statement, the military said it would also "selectively expel" South Koreans from the joint industrial zone in Kaesong, just north of the heavily fortified border, apparently a preliminary measure ahead of shutting down the complex that combines South Korean capitalism and technology with the North's cheap labor.
"The South Korean puppets are still hell-bent on the treacherous and anti-reunification confrontational racket," said the statement carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency.
Under the measure, the North will ban all South Korean tourists from its border city of Kaesong, halting a tour program run by Hyundai Group, once the largest business conglomerate in the South.
Some 300 South Koreans per day have traveled to Kaesong city for sightseeing tours since the North opened it in December last year. Since then a total of 110,000 tourists, including 2,600 foreigners, have visited the city which served as capital of the ancient Korean kingdom of Koryo, from 918 to 1392.
The North's military has complained that the tours may result in leakages of military information as its military facilities are scattered around the border. The military is also worried that brisk cross-border contacts may weaken its voice, according to intelligence sources in Seoul.
The other joint tour program to the North's Mount Kumgang has already been suspended since July when the North's army shot and killed a South Korean tourist who strayed into a restricted military zone at the mountain resort.
The North opened the sealed-off mountain resort to South Korean tourists in 1998 after the late Hyundai founder Chung Ju-yung traveled to the mountain bringing hundreds of head of cattle into the famine-hit communist country. Nearly 2 million South Korean tourists have traveled to the scenic mountain since then.
North Korea agreed last December to expand the joint tour programs and open its highest peak, Mount Paekdu, but this is now highly unlikely with the closure of the two existing programs.
In its Monday statement, the military said it would halt the 18-month-old rail service between the Kaesong complex and South Korea beginning Dec. 1. The two Koreas began a regular freight train service across the border in December last year, transporting materials and goods for the Kaesong industrial park.
South Korean officials described the cross-border train service as a "blood vessel" between the two Koreas, saying it would eventually pave the way for a rail link with the European continent. Seoul had pushed for opening a passenger train service across the border.
The North also said it would halve the number of South Koreans at the Kaesong complex, which would cripple the project that has been considered one of the crowning fruits of inter-Korean dialogue since its operation began in October 2006. More than 80 South Korean firms employ about 33,000 North Koreans to manufacture light industrial goods at the joint industrial park at Kaesong. A total of 1,200 South Koreans are staying at the complex.
The North hinted that it would eventually shut down the industrial complex, as it said Monday's actions were only a "first stage." "The prospect of inter-Korean relations will entirely depend on the attitude of the south Korean authorities," the military statement said, stressing that the military never engages in "empty talk."
The set of measures came after the North's military last month threatened "to strictly restrict and cut off" all border crossings, unless the South stopped its "confrontational" activities, referring to civic campaigns to send anti-communist leaflets into the isolated North.
Despite the warning, the South's civic activists again last week floated into the North 100,000 leaflets criticizing its leader Kim Jong Il and his dictatorship.
Further angering the North, Seoul participated as a sponsor, for the first time, of a U.N. resolution criticizing North Korea for human rights abuses. Last week the U.N. General Assembly's Human Rights Committee voted to approve the Seoul-sponsored resolution. Pyongyang strongly rejected the resolution, warning that South Korea would "face the dearest price" for cosponsoring it.
The North also attacked South Korean President Lee Myung-bak over his recent remark that his ultimate aim is reunification of the Korean peninsula under a liberal democratic system. Pyongyang said it was tantamount to declaring he would use war to unify the two Koreas.
