S. Korea should take full responsibility for shutdown of joint

 
A North Korean official said Saturday that South Korea should be held responsible if a troubled inter-Korean industrial complex in the communist country is shut down permanently.
   
In a report by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), monitored in Seoul, the official, in his capacity as a spokesperson for the General Bureau for the Special Zone Development Guidance, said responsibility should squarely rest with South Korea if the complex is folded.
   
The warning came as South Korea began pulling all of its remaining 175 workers out of the Kaesong Industrial Complex in the North's border city of the same name.
   
On Saturday, a total of 125 South Korean workers returned home, with the remaining 50 set to be withdrawn by Monday, said officials at the Unification Ministry which handles cross-border affairs.   

The trouble began earlier this month when North Korea unilaterally withdrew all of its 53,000 workers from Kaesong, forcing 123 small-scale South Korean factories there to stop operations.
   
The North cited on-going joint South Korea-U.S. military exercises as one of the reasons for its action against Kaesong. The annual military drills that began in early March are slated to end at the end of this month.
   
After North Korea rejected its offer of dialogue to resolve tension over Kaesong, South Korea on Friday decided to withdraw all of its remaining workers there.
   
The development put in serious doubt the future of the nine-year-old project which has been considered the last remaining symbol of inter-Korean rapprochement.
   
The Kaesong factory zone was launched in 2004, combining South Korea's capital and technology with cheap North Korean labor.   

South Korea has so far invested nearly US$900 million into Kaesong. For North Korea, it was a valuable source of hard currency, earning the impoverished communist country $34 million in wages annually. (Yonhap News)