This ain't good.
Actually, this seems to make it sound much better. As noted, they're free to go whenever they like; they just haven't because the companies on site want them to stay and keep working because they know they won't be able to come back if they do leave. They also did this before under similar circumstances, so it sounds more like posturing in response to posturing than anything genuinely dangerous.
That said, it does look like a sign that relations are far more stressed than usual.
Check this out.
Looks like the military's starting to crack, if only a little.
So... I wonder where that leaves NK. Truth be told their military isn't much anyway, so they could probably just ignore this and be "fine," but I'm curious if that'll put more stress on command in thinking they're running out of time. If that happens, best case they'll be willing to lose face and break off without concessions, worst case... I dunno. Maybe they'd do something stupid, but they've gotta know that anything major would be a really bad idea.
I guess my main concern is that they don't know how to break off in a game of chicken. A newish despot in a paranoid, isolated, somewhat desperate, heavily militarized nation might be kind of likely to have some of that problem.
Let's certainly hope they don't crack outright. AFP (the French equivalent of the AP) literally just reported that the North Korean General Staff has been given "final approval" for nuclear strikes, in yet another display of brinksmanship. I wonder if they're getting worried that they haven't been able to extract concessions yet as they've managed in the past.
They still don't have any nukes to use though, do they? Sounds like more defensive Don't Mess With Us rhetoric. Apparently those bombers the US has backing up SK
really get under NK's skin.
Which makes sense, of course. If someone had weapons that could blow up anything anywhere without warning or any possibility of doing anything about them, I'm thinking most people would be a bit apprehensive about them. Sort of the issue with nuclear weapons, after all.
Best outcome now might be a Kiel mutiny type situation. General Staff orders its starving soldiers to prepare for a final apocalyptic showdown, soldiers decide "Fuck that noise" and remember that their guns shoot just as well at officers as they do the enemy.
Then again....mass rebellion and civil unrest in North Korea probably wouldn't be a whole lot better. Especially if the current regime sees their power disintegrating, they might actually set us up the bomb.
Among other issues, there's just not enough stuff, notably food, to go around. I wouldn't have much hope for whoever can properly wrangle a mass military uprising being the best of leaders under normal circumstances, but as it stands you're just asking for the military to grab and keep all the food and then work from there. Even if things got better, they'd probably get better in that context.
Which... I guess
might still be better than the current situation, but I'm kind of dubious.
Then again, if there's an internal coup the US or China (or maybe even SK, especially if they're worried about the aforementioned) might feel justified going in officially and straightening things out. That'd probably be better than the current situation, but it'd be rife with all sorts of different problems.