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SEOUL: Hundreds of South Koreans working at a landmark joint business project in North Korea will start leaving on Friday after the communist state ordered them out, officials said.
South Korean managers of the Kaesong industrial estate -- built as a symbol of reconciliation -- have told their North Korean counterparts the withdrawal will begin that day, the unification ministry said Wednesday.
After months of icy relations, North Korea has vowed it will severely restrict cross-border exchanges from next Monday.
It says it will suspend day tours to Kaesong city, halt a cross-border rail service, curtail other frontier crossings and cut the number of South Koreans working at the industrial estate near the city.
Unification ministry spokesman Kim Ho-Nyoun said managers had given the North Koreans a list of people who will leave the estate. "Negotiations are under way on details," said Kim, whose ministry handles inter-Korean ties.
Some 1,592 South Koreans are posted at Kaesong, which was built with the South's money just inside North Korea.
"We still don't know how many will have to leave. It is up to North Korea," Kim said.
The North has said half of the "unnecessary" South Korean staff at a joint management office or involved in construction and services should leave by December 1.
The North has indicated it will not at present force the closure of the industrial estate, which earns it millions of dollars a year.
South Korea's Unification Minister Kim Ha-Joong told parliament Wednesday the restrictions would not seriously hamper business operations "for a while" at the complex, where 35,000 North Koreans work for 88 South Korean firms.
The North says the restrictions are in response to Seoul's failure to honour agreements reached at inter-Korean summits in 2000 and 2007.
South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak, a conservative who took office in February, has promised to take a firmer line with the North after a decade-long "sunshine" engagement policy under his liberal predecessors.
He has also said he will take another look at summit pacts which envisage joint economic projects costing tens of billions of dollars.
- AFP/yt
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