N Korea bars South delegation from joint zone

Kaesong, April 17: North Korea on Wednesday barred a delegation of South Korean businessmen from delivering food and supplies to 200 of their staff inside the closed Kaesong joint industrial zone.

Ten representatives of the 123 South Korean firms in Kaesong had applied for permission to visit the zone, two weeks after the North blocked all access amid soaring military tensions on the Korean peninsula.

"Moments ago, North Korea informed us that the request for a visit by 10 representatives of the business companies at Kaesong had been turned down," Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Hyung-Seok said.

"It is very regrettable that the North has rejected the request and disallowed a humanitarian measure," Kim said.

Kaesong, which lies 10 kilometres inside North Korea, was established in 2004 as a shining symbol of inter-Korean cooperation.

Of the nearly 900 South Koreans who were in the zone when the North first cut off access on April 3, around 200 have opted not to leave in an effort to keep their companies running.

But the North's action has left them without supplies of daily necessities, as well as raw materials.

"We again strongly urge the North Korean authorities to take responsible measures for meeting the most basic needs of the staff at Kaesong," Kim said.

The North withdrew all its 53,000 workers and suspended operations in Kaesong on April 8. Seoul's offers of dialogue to resolve the situation have been dismissed by the North as a "crafty trick".

On Tuesday, North Korea said the South was seeking to shift responsibility for Kaesong's closure, which Pyongyang insists was forced by Seoul's policy of "confrontation" and its "war-mongering" statements.

"The puppet regime can never escape from the criminal responsibility for putting Kaesong in this grave situation", the North's state body in charge of special economic zones said in a statement.

The South is "clinging to sanctions against the North, while bringing in massive volumes of new war machines and madly engaging in exercises for a war of aggression while prattling about dialogue," the statement said.

Neither of the Koreas has allowed previous crises to significantly affect the complex, which is seen as a bellwether of stability on the Korean peninsula and is a key source of hard currency for the North.

NKorea lashes out anew over protest in Seoul

North Korea said it was open to talks, but not as long as the United States is "brandishing a nuclear stick," while Washington insisted that the burden for renewed negotiations now rests with Pyongyang.

North Korea also warned that it will intensify unspecified "military countermeasures" unless the US stops conducting military drills on the peninsula and withdraws the military assets that Pyongyang says threaten the North with a nuclear attack

The statements on Tuesday came amid international fears that the North is preparing to conduct a medium-range missile test and also as North Korea marked the second day of festivities in honour of the April 15 birthday of its first leader, Kim Il Sung.

The North's statement said it would refuse any offers of talks with the South until it apologised for the "monstrous criminal act."

"If the puppet authorities truly want dialogue and negotiations, they should apologise for all anti-DPRK hostile acts, big and small, and show the compatriots their will to stop all these acts in practice," the statement said. North Korea's official name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or DPRK.

Later in the day, its state media quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman saying North Korea has no intention of holding talks with the US unless it also abandons its hostility against the North.

North Korea is not opposed to dialogue but has no intention of "sitting at the humiliating negotiating table with the party brandishing a nuclear stick," the statement said.

But in Washington, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell later told reporters that North Korea needs to make the first move. "They know what they need to do in terms of stopping their provocations and showing a seriousness of purpose, and so they know what's required of them," he said.