S. Korea says to take stronger measures in response to DPRK nuke test, rocket launch

South Korean President Park Geun-hye said Tuesday that Seoul will take "stronger and more effective" measures to create an environment forcing change in Pyongyang.

Park said in a nationally televised parliamentary speech that those measures will make the DPRK realize a fact that the country cannot survive with nuclear development.

Her parliamentary speech was arranged to explain Seoul's decision last week to shut down an inter-Korean factory park in the DPRK's border city of Kaesong as part of its punitive actions to Pyongyang's nuclear test and long-range rocket launch.

The DPRK launched a rocket on Feb. 7 to carry an Earth observation satellite into orbit, following its fourth nuclear test on Jan. 6, the first of its disputed H-bomb test. Seoul and the international community condemned those provocations as a clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions.

In response to the rocket launch, South Korea decided last Wednesday to stop operations at the Kaesong Industrial Zone, which Seoul saw as a key source of hard currency for Pyongyang to develop nuclear and missile programs.

The DPRK responded last Thursday by shutting down the last symbol of inter-Korean cooperation project, expelling South Korean workers from there and freezing all of South Korean assets in Kaesong, while cutting off the remaining inter-Korean communications hotlines.

Park said that the complete shutdown of the Kaesong complex represented only the start of a series of sanctions toward the DPRK in cooperation with the international society.

It will not happen any more like in the past that South Korea yields to DPRK provocations and provide unconditional aid to it, Park noted. Endit