More South Koreans on Saturday began toleave North Korea and the factory park where they work, four days afterPyongyang closed the border to people and goods.
Twenty-one South Koreans returned from the Kaesongindustrial park Saturday morning, and about 100 of the roughly 600 still therewere expected to return home by day's end, the Unification Ministry in Seoulsaid.
One manager, Han Nam-il, interviewed as he left, said he sawNorth Korean security officials "fully armed" before he crossed theborder.
The industrial park is the last remnant of North-Southcooperation. Pyongyang's blocking of traffic there is among many provocativemoves it has made recently in anger over U.N. sanctions for its Feb. 12 nucleartest and current U.S.-South Korean military drills. North Korea suggestedearlier this week that diplomats in Pyongyang leave for their own safety.
North Korea said last week it had entered a "state ofwar" with South Korea, but officials in Seoul say they have seen nopreparations for a full-scale attack while the chance of a localized conflictremains. Earlier Pyongyang threatened a nuclear attack on the United States.
On Thursday, South Korea's defense minister said the Northhas moved a missile with "considerable range" to its east, possiblyfor testing or as part of drills. Earlier in the week, North Korea said itwould restart a plutonium reactor closed in 2007 and use it to make fuel fornuclear bombs.
North Korea has not forced South Korean workers to leaveKaesong, but some of the South Korean companies working there are running outof raw materials because goods are being blocked at the border as well.
Sung Hyun-sang, head of an apparel manufacturer that employs1,400 North Korean workers, said Friday that his factory will be "in realtrouble" if supplies aren't sent to his factory in Kaesong in a week ortwo.
North Korea is threatening to "wither the Kaesongindustrial complex to death" rather than taking South Korean managershostage, which would spark an overwhelming international outcry, ChangYong-seok at the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul NationalUniversity said.
But the North Korea analyst said tension atKaesong is likely to tone down once the U.S. and South Korea wrap up theirannual drills at the end of this month. The allies say the exercises in SouthKorea are routine, but the North calls them rehearsals for an invasion and saysit needs nuclear weapons to defend itself.