In this photo released by South Korea Unification Ministry, former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry, left, looks at North Korean workers during his visit to a factory of South Korean apparel maker Shinwon company in the inter-Korean industrial park in Kaesong, North Korea, Thursday, Feb. 22, 2007. Korea Times file

South Korea currently has no plans to reopen a joint industrial complex in North Korea's border town of Gaesong, officials from the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae said Thursday.

The resumption of the Gaesong complex would be impossible unless international sanctions against the North are first removed, they added.

The remarks came in response to reports that Pyongyang has decided to retract its decision to freeze or confiscate South Korean assets in the Gaesong Industrial Complex and the South Korean-developed resort and facilities on Mount Kumgang.

"It is not true," a Cheong Wa Dae official said while speaking on condition of anonymity. He also dismissed reports that Seoul plans to reopen the Gaesong complex in the near future.

The joint industrial park was shut down in early 2016, when Seoul's former Park Geun-hye administration pulled out all South Korean businesses and their workers as part of its unilateral sanctions against the communist state.