South Korean worker Kown Suk-mi who was working for a South Korean business in the North Korean city of Kaesong, top center, is surrounded by the media after returning from Kaesong at the customs, immigration and quarantine office in Paju, South Korea, near the border village of Panmunjom, Thursday, April 4, 2013.North Korea on Wednesday barred South Korean workers from entering a jointly run factory park just over the heavily armed border in the North, officials in Seoul said, a day after Pyongyang announced it would restart its long-shuttered plutonium reactor and increase production of nuclear weapons material. AP/Ahn Young-joon
SEOUL – North Korea has demanded the withdrawal of all South Korean managers and staff from the Kaesong joint industrial zone by next week, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported Thursday.
The personnel should leave the complex, which lies 10 kilometres (six miles) inside North Korea, by April 10, Yonhap said without quoting any sources.
The South Korean Unification Ministry said it had received no such formal notification.
As of Thursday morning, there were 823 South Korean citizens in Kaesong, the ministry said.