North Korea orders military takeover of joint South Korea factory park

On Thursday, South Korea suspended operations at the Kaesong industrial zone, a decade-old factory park just across the border in North Korea where 124 South Korean factories hire North Korean workers, and citizens of both countries have a rare chance to interact. The factory park has only been closed once before since starting operations in 2004, when North Korea pulled the plug for five months in 2013. This time, North Korea called South Korea's suspension of operations a "dangerous declaration of war" and "declaration of an end to the last lifeline of the North-South relations."

Pyongyang ordered the North Korean military to take over Kaesong, moved to deport all South Koreans at the industrial park, removed all 55,000 North Korean workers, froze all South Korean assets, and cut off two emergency hotlines to the South. It also insulted South Korean President Park Geun-hye, calling her a "confrontational wicked woman" who masterminded the Kaesong shutdown and crudely accusing her of living on "the groin of her American boss." Park said she had suspended operations to prevent North Korea from earning cash it could use to further its nuclear weapons program, after North Korea tested what it said was an H-bomb last month and launched a rocket that the U.S. and its allies say was a stealth ICBM test. The U.S. Senate Wednesday night unanimously voted to slap new sanctions on Pyongyang.

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