Seoul: North Korea Spent 70% of Money for Workers on Weapons, Luxury Goods

North Korea channeled about 70 percent of the money it received for workers at the now-shuttered Kaesong industrial park into its weapons programs and to buy luxury goods for the impoverished nation’s tiny elite, South Korea said Sunday.

A visitor watches the North side through the glass showing a map of the Kaesong iIndustrial Complex and the border area between North and South Koreas at the Imjingak Pavilion near the border village of Panmunjom, which has separated the two Koreas since the Korean War, in Paju, South Korea, on Feb. 14, 2016. AP Photo/Lee Jin-man

SEOUL, South Korea—North Korea channeled about 70 percent of the money it received for workers at the now-shuttered Kaesong industrial park into its weapons programs and to buy luxury goods for the impoverished nation’s tiny elite, South Korea said Sunday.

The jointly run park, just outside the North Korean city of Kaesong and about 50 kilometers (35 miles) from Seoul, employed about 54,000 North Koreans who worked for over 120 South Korean companies, most of them small and medium-size manufacturers. Seoul closed the park last week in retaliation for North Korea’s recent rocket launch.

In a statement issued Sunday, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said that about 70 percent of the 616 billion won ($560 million) paid to the North since the park was established in 2004 was used to develop nuclear weapons and missiles, and for the luxury goods.

However, it did not detail how it arrived at that percentage.

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