North Korea Expels Group Of S. Koreans

TOKYO — North Korea expelled a team of South Korean officials from its territory yesterday, a response to the South's increasingly tough criticism of its neighbor's record on human rights and nuclear proliferation.

For a month, the new president of South Korea has been warning North Korea to clean up its act on human rights and move quickly to get rid of nuclear weapons — if it wants aid from the South. Communist North Korea, destitute and on the brink of a severe food shortage, made it abundantly clear that it does not want to be lectured to by President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea, expelling 11 South Korean government officials from the Kaesong industrial zone, a booming factory park just north of the border. The factory park employs 24,000 North Koreans who work for 69 South Korean companies and is one of the few economic bright spots in the North.

After an emergency meeting in Seoul, presidential spokesman Lee Dong-kwan said the expulsion "was a very regrettable incident that could damage progress of economic cooperation between the South and the North."

The North should be more predictable in its behavior toward the South, Mr. Lee said. But he also made it clear that South Korea does not want the situation to deteriorate.