France asks China to intervene in Korea crisis

France has asked China to intervene in the Korean military crisis.

The Korean peninsula has been locked in a cycle of escalating tension that has seen Pyongyang threaten missile and nuclear strikes against the US and South Korea in response to UN sanctions and joint military drills.

This morning it went a step further by blocking access to a key joint industrial zone it shares with South Korea.

South Korea's Defence Minister said military action is "an option" to protect his country's people.

North Korea today barred South Korean workers from entering a jointly run factory park just over the heavily armed border in the North.

The move came a day after Pyongyang announced it would restart its long-dormant plutonium reactor and increase production of nuclear weapons material.

The bid to bar South Koreans from entering the Kaesong factory park, the last remaining symbol of detente between the rivals, comes amid increasing hostility from Pyongyang.

It has threatened to stage nuclear and missile strikes on Seoul and Washington and said that the armistice ending the 1950s Korean War is void.

Seoul’s Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Hyung-suk said Pyongyang is allowing South Koreans to return home from Kaesong, but that about 480 South Koreans who had planned to travel to the park today were being refused entry.

He said North Korea cited recent political circumstances on the Korean Peninsula when they delivered their decision to block South Korean workers from entering Kaesong.

The two sides do not allow their citizens to travel to the other country without approval, but an exception has previously been made each day for the South Koreans working at Kaesong.

The Korean Peninsula is technically in a state of war because the Korean War ended in a truce not a peace treaty.

North Korea is angry about current South Korea-US military drills and new UN sanctions over its February 12 nuclear test, its third.

Dozens of South Korean firms run factories in the border town of Kaesong. Using North Korea’s cheap, efficient labour, the Kaesong complex produced $470m worth of goods last year.

Pyongyang threatened last week to shut down the park, which is run with mostly North Korean labour and South Korean know-how.

It expressed anger over South Korean media reports that said North Korea would not shut the park because it is a source of crucial hard currency for the impoverished country.