Kaesong Industrial Complex

North Korea responded to an unusually harsh verbal attack by South Korea’s president against the North’s leader and its recent nuclear test and rocket launch with a characteristically colorful invective of its own Saturday, calling her policy traitorous and adding that Washington’s newly enacted sanctions are “laughable.”

As the world focuses on the war in Syria, the refugee crisis in Europe, and the primary slugfest in the U.S., the two Koreas are heading toward a catastrophe in the Far East.

North Korea channeled about 70 percent of the money it received for workers at the now-shuttered Kaesong industrial park into its weapons programs and to buy luxury goods for the impoverished nation’s tiny elite, South Korea said Sunday.

The United States temporarily deployed an additional Patriot missile battery in South Korea in response to North Korea’s nuclear test and a long-range rocket launch, ahead of talks next week to set up an even more sophisticated U.S. missile defense in a move that has worried China and Russia.

South Korean workers on Thursday began shutting down a jointly run industrial park in North Korea, a move that will end, at least temporarily, the Koreas’ last major cooperation project as punishment over Pyongyang’s recent rocket launch.

South Korea said Wednesday that it will shut down a joint industrial park with North Korea in response to its recent rocket launch, accusing the North of using hard currency from the park to develop its nuclear and missile programs.