A South Korean security guard works to turn back vehicles as they were refused to enter to Kaesong, North Korea, at the customs, immigration and quarantine office in Paju, South Korea, near the border village of Panmunjom, Thursday, April 4, 2013. North Korea on Wednesday barred South Korean workers from entering a jointly run factory park just over the heavily armed border in the North, officials in Seoul said, a day after Pyongyang announced it would restart its long-shuttered plutonium reactor and increase production of nuclear weapons material. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
A South Korean security guard works to turn back vehicles as they were refused to enter to Kaesong, North Korea, at the customs, immigration and quarantine office in Paju, South Korea, near the border village of Panmunjom, Thursday, April 4, 2013. North Korea on Wednesday barred South Korean workers from entering a jointly run factory park just over the heavily armed border in the North, officials in Seoul said, a day after Pyongyang announced it would restart its long-shuttered plutonium reactor and increase production of nuclear weapons material. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
South Korean small business owners who run factories in the sprawling complex in North Korea's border city of Kaesong, hold a press conference to demand that the North Korea to normalize the border crossings in front of the gateways to North Korea at the customs, immigration and quarantine office in Paju, South Korea, near the border village of Panmunjom, Thursday, April 4, 2013. North Korea on Wednesday barred South Korean workers from entering a jointly run factory park just over the heavily armed border in the North, officials in Seoul said, a day after Pyongyang announced it would restart its long-shuttered plutonium reactor and increase production of nuclear weapons material. The banner reads " Normalize the border crossings. " (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
South Korean drivers wait to head for the North Korea's city of Kaesong, at the customs, immigration and quarantine office in Paju, South Korea, near the border village of Panmunjom, Thursday, April 4, 2013. North Korea on Wednesday barred South Korean workers from entering a jointly run factory park just over the heavily armed border in the North, officials in Seoul said, a day after Pyongyang announced it would restart its long-shuttered plutonium reactor and increase production of nuclear weapons material. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
FILE - In this Sunday, April 15, 2012 file photo, a North Korean vehicle carrying a missile passes by during a mass military parade in Pyongyang's Kim Il Sung Square to celebrate the centenary of the birth of the late North Korean founder Kim Il Sung. North Korea has moved a missile with "considerable range" to its east coast, South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin said Thursday, April 4, 2013 but he added that there are no signs that Pyongyang is preparing for a full-scale conflict. The report came hours after North Korea's military warned that it has been authorized to attack the U.S. using "smaller, lighter and diversified" nuclear weapons. It was the North's latest war cry against America in recent weeks, with the added suggestion that it had improved its nuclear technology. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder, File)
Chinese tourists take pictures at the Imjingak Pavilion near the border village of Panmunjom, dividing the two Koreas since the Korean War, in Paju, north of Seoul, South Korea, Friday, April 5, 2013. After a series of escalating threats, North Korea has moved a missile with "considerable range" to its east coast, South Korea's defense minister said Thursday. But he emphasized that the missile was not capable of reaching the United States and that there are no signs that the North is preparing for a full-scale conflict. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) ? More South Koreans on Saturday began to leave North Korea and the factory park where they work, four days after Pyongyang closed the border to people and goods.
Twenty-one South Koreans returned from the Kaesong industrial park Saturday morning, and about 100 of the roughly 600 still there were expected to return home by day's end, the Unification Ministry in Seoul said.
One manager, Han Nam-il, interviewed as he left, said he saw North Korean security officials "fully armed" before he crossed the border.
The industrial park is the last remnant of North-South cooperation. Pyongyang's blocking of traffic there is among many provocative moves it has made recently in anger over U.N. sanctions for its Feb. 12 nuclear test and current U.S.-South Korean military drills. North Korea suggested earlier this week that diplomats in Pyongyang leave for their own safety.
North Korea said last week it had entered a "state of war" with South Korea, but officials in Seoul say they have seen no preparations for a full-scale attack while the chance of a localized conflict remains. Earlier Pyongyang threatened a nuclear attack on the United States.
On Thursday, South Korea's defense minister said the North has moved a missile with "considerable range" to its east, possibly for testing or as part of drills. Earlier in the week, North Korea said it would restart a plutonium reactor closed in 2007 and use it to make fuel for nuclear bombs.
North Korea has not forced South Korean workers to leave Kaesong, but some of the South Korean companies working there are running out of raw materials because goods are being blocked at the border as well.
Sung Hyun-sang, head of an apparel manufacturer that employs 1,400 North Korean workers, said Friday that his factory will be "in real trouble" if supplies aren't sent to his factory in Kaesong in a week or two.
North Korea is threatening to "wither the Kaesong industrial complex to death" rather than taking South Korean managers hostage, which would spark an overwhelming international outcry, Chang Yong-seok at the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University said.
But the North Korea analyst said tension at Kaesong is likely to tone down once the U.S. and South Korea wrap up their annual drills at the end of this month. The allies say the exercises in South Korea are routine, but the North calls them rehearsals for an invasion and says it needs nuclear weapons to defend itself.
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