South Korea's unification ministry plans to restrict the entry of workers into the Kaesong industrial complex, an inter-Korean factory park in the namesake city of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), local media reported Thursday.
An unidentified unification ministry official told reporters that workers, allowed to enter the Kaesong complex, will be limited to those who have a direct relevance to production activities.
Such action came a day after the DPRK announced its first successful test of a "hydrogen bomb," the fourth in total.
About 1,200 South Koreans on Thursday stayed at the Kaesong industrial complex, where some 120 South Korean companies are employing tens of thousands of DPRK workers to operate factories.
The official was quoted as saying that the number of South Koreans who will be allowed to stay there could slide by as much as 100, calling the limited entry as necessary steps to protect people's safety after the DPRK's nuclear test.
The ministry also plans to re-examine the scheduled inter-Korean exchanges in private sector and the cooperation projects to support the DPRK, indicating a delay in those projects.
South Korea is pushing to encourage the UN Security Council to take stronger sanctions against the DPRK, saying that the fourth nuclear test was in clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions.
