Kaesong Industrial Region
special administrative industrial region of North Korea
The Kaesŏng Industrial Region (KIR) or Kaesŏng Industrial Zone (KIZ) is a special administrative industrial region of North Korea (DPRK). It was formed in 2002 from part of the Kaesŏng Directly-Governed City. On 10 February 2016, it was temporarily closed by the South Korean government and all staff recalled by the Park Geun-hye administration, although the former President of South Korea, Moon Jae-in, signalled his desire to "reopen and expand" the region in 2017.
Its most notable feature is the Kaesŏng industrial park, which operated from 2004 to 2016 as a collaborative economic development with South Korea (ROK). The park is located ten kilometres (six miles) north of the Korean Demilitarized Zone, an hour's drive from Seoul, and was with direct road and rail access to South Korea. The park allows South Korean companies to employ cheap labour that is educated, skilled, and fluent in Korean, whilst providing North Korea with an important source of foreign currency.
As of April 2013, 123 South Korean companies were employing approximately 53,000 DPRK workers and 800 ROK staff.
At times of tension between North and South Korea, southern access to the Industrial Park has been restricted. On 3 April 2013, during the 2013 Korean crisis, North Korea blocked access to the region to all South Korean citizens. On 8 April 2013, the North Korean government removed all 53,000 North Korean workers from the Kaesŏng industrial park, which effectively shut down all activities.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Kaesong Industrial Region” as special administrative industrial region of North Korea. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as special administrative industrial region of North Korea. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q495424. VIAF identifies the subject as 135350782. Authority coordinates are 37.930, 126.625. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2002, 2016, 2017 and 2004.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kaesong Industrial Region” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.