Updated

The South Korean entrepreneurs who invested up to 10 years and millions of dollars in the shuttered Kaesong industrial complex across the border in North Korea have little more than hope to cling to as assembly lines sit idle day after day.

They say they want to go back to work. The sooner the better. They say they cannot abandon their investments in factories, or the cheap North Korean labor that helped them put aside misgivings about doing business with the South's unpredictable neighbor.

North Korea has been unrelenting in its decision to bar South Koreans from entering the factory city and withdraw the 53,000 North Korean workers who manned assembly lines.

As the lockout enters a third week, some businesses are already quietly mulling giving up on Kaesong altogether.