Seoul: Pyongyang Used Money from Joint Factories for Weapons

The report was released one day before North Korea claimed to have detonated a hydrogen bomb as part of its fourth-ever nuclear weapons test and just over a month before North Korea launched its fourth satellite launch vehicles. North Korea launched a rocket February 7, carrying what it said was an Earth observation satellite into space.

Washington, Seoul and others view the launch as a prohibited test of missile technology and are pushing hard to have Pyongyang slapped with strong sanctions.

The unification ministry said while the North’s regime took 70 per cent of the Kaesong workers’ wages to fund state projects including arms development, it was unclear how much was funnelled into the nuclear and missile programmes.

In a report to the U.N. Human Rights Council, Darusman recommended that the Council arrange an official communication, sent directly to Kim and signed by Darusman or U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein.

The complete shutdown of the Kaesong Industrial Complex is unprecedented as South Korea had previously maintained operations, even through periods of heightened strains.

Park plans to address parliament on Tuesday, where she will seek bipartisan support for addressing the security threat from Pyongyang, the presidential office said on Sunday.

“Considering North Korea’s nuclear [and missile capabilities], we need to think about our own survival strategy and countermeasures that include peaceful nuclear and missile programs for the sake of self-defense”, said Rep. Won Yoo-chul, the floor leader of the Saenuri Party. “When North Korea’s KWP, the government or the military earn foreign currency, that money is transferred to and stored at Room No. 39 of the KWP Secretariat (under the Central Committee of the Korean Workers’ Party)”.

Sunday the Park administration justified closing the jointly run Kaesong Industrial Complex in North Korea last week, saying that 70 percent of the income generated at the complex was used to finance the North’s nuclear program.

“We want to continue the dialogue”, he told reporters on Saturday.

It is the first formal acknowledgement by the South that the 55,000 North Korean workers at the Kaesong complex saw little of the $160 they were paid on average a month.

China, North Korea’s most powerful ally, backed the statement, as did the other 14 council members during an emergency meeting.

The US and North Korea agreed to a United Nations-backed armistice in 1953 that ended three years of fighting in the Korean War.

Quoting officials in the South Korean government, Yonhap News said development of the KN-08 weapon was not yet complete, but the creation of the mobile launch unit indicates that Pyongyang is confident that it will be ready soon. Ha suggested that, if world powers do not assassinate Kim Jong-un, he “may be the 21st century’s Hitler with the nuclear weapons in his hands”.