North Korea blocks South from shared Kaesong zone as crisis deepens
By Alastair Jamieson and Andrea Mitchell, NBC News
North Korea has banned South Korean workers from the jointly-run Kaesong industrial zone in the latest escalation in the diplomatic crisis surrounding the rogue nuclear state.
Seoul said about 800 South Koreans who had stayed overnight at the complex were being allowed to return home, but that new workers were not being allowed across the border.
Kaesong, a major source of income for the impoverished, communist North, is home to 124 South Korean companies that employ 53,000 North Korean workers in a cross-border, heavily-fortified joint enterprise.
"South Korea's government deeply regrets the entry ban and urges it be lifted immediately," South Korea official Kim Hyung-seok told reporters Wednesday.
It came as China expressed "serious concern" to U.S. diplomats over the worsening crisis, which has already prompted the U.S. Navy to deploy a second destroyer in the western Pacific to respond to any missile threats from the North.
A Chinese official met ambassadors from the United States and both Koreas, expressing hope that Pyongyang and Seoul could resolve their differences through talks, Chinas foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said, according to Reuters and Voice of America reporter Steve Herman.
Russia also voiced concern about the rogue Communist states military apparatus, saying human error or technical malfunction may cause the situation on the Korean peninsula to go out of control, according to a report Wednesday on Russia news service Interfax.
The comments came after Secretary of State John Kerry denounced North Korea's increasingly threatening rhetoric as "unacceptable," and said the U.S would defend its allies, South Korea and Japan, from any threat from the North.
North Korea knows what it needs to do if it wants to resume dialogue with the rest of the world, Kerry told a joint news conference at the State Department with South Korea's foreign minister on Tuesday.
Vowing to reopen the Yongbyong nuclear reactor, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un showed no sign he's listening to the outside world and has no intention of giving up their nuclear weapons.
North Korea is blocking the entry of South Korean workers into a large joint industrial zone, Reuters and the BBC reported Wednesday.
More than 50,000 North Koreans and several hundred South Korean managers work at the Kaesong complex, which is home to more than 100 factories. Permission is granted on a daily basis for South Korean workers to cross into the complex, situated in the North, the BBC said.
South Korean workers were being allowed to leave the complex but not cross back into it.
"South Korea's government deeply regrets the entry ban and urges it be lifted immediately," South Korea official Kim Hyung-seok told reporters.
The USS Decatur was headed back to San Diego, Calif., when it was given a new mission: to join the USS McCain in a missile defense mission, Pentagon spokesman George Little said Tuesday.
A third destroyer, the USS Fitzgerald, is also available to respond, if necessary, officials said.