IANS | 02 May, 2024
North Korea appears to have taken down a building located near the
now-shuttered inter-Korean factory park in the North Korean border city
of Kaesong, the unification ministry said Thursday.
The dismantled
building had been built outside the factory park by a South Korean
company for investment purposes, a ministry official told reporters,
without providing further details, Yonhap news agency reported.
The
official said the building had never been in use even when the Kaesong
Industrial Complex was normally running before South Korea suspended its
operation in February 2016 in response to the North's nuclear and
long-range missile tests.
Earlier this week, the Voice of America,
a Washington-based news outlet, reported that the building located some
50 meters from the factory park entrance had been dismantled, citing
satellite imagery.
Once a symbol of inter-Korean reconciliation,
the Kaesong complex was home to more than 120 small South Korean plants
that produced garments and other labor-intensive goods by employing more
than 54,300 North Korean workers.
Amid frosty inter-Korean
relations, North Korea blew up the joint liaison office in the Kaesong
complex in June 2020 in anger over Seoul's failure to stop North Korean
defectors from sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border.
