It looks like the North Koreans are going to go through with their threats to shut down the North/South border:

North Korea said on Monday it will suspend tours to Kaesong, halt cross-border rail services and halve the number of South Koreans in a joint industrial complex in the same North Korean city early next week in protest at Seoul’s tough policy toward Pyongyang.

The North will also eject more South Korean personnel and vehicles from the joint Mount Geumgang resort and the Kaesong complex, according to a statement by the North’s military carried by the country’s official Korean Central News Agency.

All the retaliatory measures will be go into effect on Dec. 1, the statement said.  [Yonhap]

A lot of what they are doing is simply symbolic judging by what they won’t do:

However, the measures excluded shutting down the Kaesong complex, a symbol of inter-Korean rapprochement and, for the impoverished communist country, a key source of foreign currency, according to a separate letter sent to the firms and unveiled by Seoul officials.

“The South Korean puppets are still hell-bent on the treacherous and anti-reunification confrontational racket,” the statement said.

I say this is symbolic because the North Koreans are not willing to shut down the Kaesong Complex which is a huge cash cow for the North Korean regime.  The fact they won’t shut this plant down is further evidence the regime is desperate for cash.  You combine this report with the prior reports of trade on the Chinese and North Korean border coming to a stand still due to the current global economic crisis and it becomes pretty clear the North is desperate for more aid.  To get more aid they are trying to pressure South Korean President Lee Myung-bak to reverse his current policies of linking aid to the communist country with progress with the North Korean nuclear issue.

It will be interesting to see if Lee Myung-bak sticks to his current policies because I would not be surprised if North Korea tries to ratchet up the tensions on the border in the coming months in order to put renewed pressure on Lee to give more aid to the country.  I hope Lee has his contingency plans ready just in case.