North Korea took a swing at the new South Korean government and its hard-line toward Pyongyang on Thursday by expelling the South's officials at a joint factory park north of the border and hailed as a model of cooperation.
The South Korean government, in office barely a month, has pushed the touchy and destitute North to clean up its human rights record, repatriate its citizens held by the communist state and make progress on nuclear disarmament.
"The government deeply regrets the North's measure," Kim Ho-nyoun, a Unification Ministry spokesman, told a news briefing.
The predawn expulsion of South Korean officials at the Kaesong industrial site, on the north side of their heavily defended border, is one of the most aggressive moves in years by the North against its wealthy neighbour.
"You can see this move as North Korea trying to train the new South Korean government and put pressure on it," said Park Young-ho, an expert on the North at the South's Korea Institute for National Unification.
He added that Pyongyang was also looking to stir up conflict in the South over how to treat its prickly neighbour.
President Lee Myung-bak convened an emergency meeting to discuss the expulsion.
The North's official media has yet to report that Lee has become president, the first conservative in the job after a decade of left-of-centre leaders who handed over billions of dollars in aid to try to win over the reclusive state and maintain stability on the peninsula.
