North Korea to withdraw from inter-Korea liaison office

North Korea pulled its staff out of an inter-Korean liaison office on Friday (March 22), Seoul said. Seoul said it was contacted on Friday and informed that the North's staff would be leaving later in the day.

It has expressed its regret at the decision and is urging staff from the North to return as soon as possible. The pullout follows a failed summit between the US and North Korean leaders in Hanoi last month.

The office in the Northern city of Kaesong was opened in September as the two Koreas knitted closer ties.

The decision had been taken “in accordance with an order from an upper command”, South Korea’s Vice Unification Minister Chun Hae-sung told a briefing, adding: “They said they didn’t care whether we stayed at the liaison office or not.”

The South’s President Moon Jae-in was instrumental in brokering the talks process between the nuclear-armed, sanctions-hit North and the US, Seoul’s key security ally.

Moon has long backed engagement with the North to bring it to the negotiating table and has been pushing the carrot of inter-Korean development projects, among them an industrial zone also in Kaesong and cross-border tourism for Southerners.

But the failure by Kim and Trump to reach agreement in Hanoi last month on walking back Pyongyang’s nuclear programme in exchange for relaxation of the measures against it has raised questions over the future of the process, despite both sides’ expressed willingness to talk further.

In his New Year speech – a key political event in the North –Kim said without giving details that Pyongyang might see a “new way for defending the sovereignty of the country and the supreme interests of the state” if the US persisted with sanctions.

Seoul sought to keep the door open to more contact.

“We regret the North’s decision,” Chun said. “Though North Korea has pulled out, we will continue to work at the liaison office as usual.”