North Korea prepares to shut border with South

Secretive North Korea said on Monday it would all but seal its border with the South a week before heading into talks with its neighbour and other regional powers which are pressing it to give up nuclear weapons.

The tension on the long-divided Korean peninsula has been escalating since conservative President Lee Myung-bak took office in February promising to invest heavily in the impoverished North on condition it moves to end development of an atomic arsenal.

North Korea’s KCNA news agency said the border closure was the first step “to be taken in connection with the evermore undisguised anti-DPRK (North Korea) confrontational racket of the south Korean puppet authorities.”

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But the latest move appeared to be more sabre-rattling than substance as the North will continue to let in some South Koreans to manage an industrial zone just across the border in what is the one significant economic relationship it has with the South.

“(The North) never said it would halt production or expel staff related to the production process. So even in the worst case of operating with only half of the staff, we think there won’t be any problem in production,” said Lee Eun-suk, an official at Shinwon Corp, which has clothing factories at Kaesong.

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The increasingly angry rhetoric follows an end to South Korean largesse to the North since Lee came to power.

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