DPRK threatens to shut down industrial park with South Korea

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) threatened on Saturday to shut down a joint industrial park with South Korea if the latter continued to insult the DPRK's dignity, the official KCNA news agency reported. "We will close the zone without mercy if South Korea continues to tarnish the DPRK's image," the KCNA news agency quoted a statement of the General Bureau for Central Guidance to the Development of the Special Zone as saying. The industrial park, located in the DPRK border city of Kaesong, was launched in 2004 to house around 120 South Korean companies that employ some 50,000 DPRK workers. The announcement came just hours after the DPRK said it had entered "a state of war" against South Korea, which once again escalated tensions on the Korean Peninsula after Pyongyang conducted a third nuclear test on Feb. 12 as a countermeasure against U.S.-South Korean joint military drills. The statement also dismissed Seoul's claims that the DPRK did not take actions on the Kaesong Industrial Zone because it was a source for the country's foreign currency income. "It is an extremely unusual thing that the industrial complex is still in existence under the current grave situation," it said.