North Korea Friday rejected South Korea's "fraudulent" proposal for talks on restarting operations at a joint industrial zone and challenged Seoul to withdraw all remaining staff from the area.South Korea on Thursday had given the North 24 hours to agree to formal negotiations on the future of the Kaesong complex, warning of "significant measures" if Pyongyang declined.
The Unification Ministry said it would announce its next step at 0900 GMT, with Yonhap news agency reporting that it would call on the 175 South Koreans still in Kaesong to leave immediately.
Dismissing what it called the South's "fraudulent" ultimatum, the North's top military body issued a statement insisting that any decisive move on Kaesong would come from its side.
"If the South Korean puppet regime keeps aggravating the situation, it will be (North Korea), not South Korea, that will be forced to take the final decisive and crucial measure first," the National Defence Commission (NDC) said.
Insisting that South Korean government officials were responsible for the standoff over Kaesong, the NDC said resorting to "ultimatum-like announcements... would only advance their final destruction".