The Washington Post says North Korea’s latest threats of war have rattled South Koreans’ views about unification.

The U.S. daily said that “despite years of tensions, a majority of South Koreans have long clung to a cautiously optimistic vision for their peninsula’s future.”

However, the report said in the wake of recent weeks of “fury from Pyongyang and in particular the barricade of a joint industrial park near the border,” many South Koreans have been led to think differently about unification. It explained South Koreans are beginning to think “the South is better off keeping its distance from the North than cooperating with it or even trying to.”

The paper said the North’s move to ban the entry of South Korean workers into the Gaeseong Industrial Complex “makes it far harder for new South Korean President Park Geun-hye to spur economic cooperation with the North, even if she wanted to.”