North Korea Officially Severs Hotline With South, Blocks Workers from Kaesong

For once, North Korea kept its promise: the insular nation officially cut off a hotline with Seoul Wednesday at the shared Kaesong industrial complex, blocking hundreds of workers from the South from entering factories at the border. 

North Korea claimed to have severed the Kaesong hotline with the South last week. Pyongyang cautioned the United Nations that it was only a matter of time before violence erupted, saying the tensions had developed into a "simmering nuclear war."  After severing another hotline earlier in the month, North Korea cut yet another link between itself and the South, ceasing operations at Kaesong. A joint industrial complex run by the North and South together, the complex was the last symbolic remnant of cooperation between the two Koreas.

South Korea's Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Hyung-suk confirmed that Pyongyang had indeed closed the factories at Kaesong to its citizens, saying roughly 480 South Koreans were refused entry Wednesday morning. 

North Korean officials noted "political circumstances" in the region as they announced they'd chosen to close the factories to the South's workers. North Korea is ostensibly angry with the U.S. and South over the countries' recent joint military exercises in the region. Pyongyang last shut the border at Kaesong in 2009, once again over U.S.-South Korea joint military drills.

The move was likely politically motivated, as the shutting down the factories to personnel from Seoul would be more detrimental to the North's economy than the South's, said analysts in South Korea. The continued antagonism arrived amid a recent spate of incessant threats from the Pyongyang. 

North Korea declared its scientists had begun "readjusting and restarting" the North's nuclear facilities at the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center Tuesday, which includes a plutonium reactor and a uranium enrichment plant.

Experts on the region say North Korea's nearly-endless flood of aggressive actions is meant to pressure the U.S. into "disarmament-for-aid" discussions and strengthen its people's devotion to new leader Kim Jong Un by showing he is a powerful military commander. Some also note that it's likely the majority of Pyongyang's threats are merely attempts to feel out, or intimidate South Korea's recently elected  - and thus untested - president, and for Kim Jong Un  - also a fairly new leader  - to prove his mettle to an inert national audience. 

As many experts on the region often point out, while the exact nuclear capabilities of North Korea remain uncertain because of the nation's intense isolation, evidence suggests that Pyongyang is still many years away from developing nuclear missiles, and doesn't currently have the proper weaponry for pulling off such far off strikes. 

Pyongyang has made a point in recent months of displaying its military brawn through open threats aimed at the U.S. and South, provocative military exercises aimed at South Korean and U.S. targets, and more. North Korea has continued to ratchet up its aggressive rhetoric on a near-daily basis ever since its third nuclear test launch in February. 

North Korea announced Sunday that "nuclear armed forces [are] the nation's life" amid constantly rising tensions in the region. 

North Korea launched yet another series of verbal attacks Saturday declaring it had entered a "state of war" with the South, and threatening the U.S with nuclear war if it chose to continue provoking the isolated nation. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered the state's military to set its missiles to "ready to strike" America and South Korea in order to "settle accounts with the U.S.," he announced Friday through KCNA.

Faced with the deluge of hostile behavior from Pyongyang, the U.S. and South Korea signed a new military contingency pact March 21 in preparation for future North Korean "provocations," aimed to address the threat of immediate attacks on the South, or U.S. bases in the region.