ID :
191794
Wed, 06/29/2011 - 13:30
Auther :
Shortlink :
https://oananews.org//node/191794
The shortlink copeid
Koreas fail to discuss South Korean assets seized by North
(ATTN: RECASTS throughout with comments by South Korean official and North Korea's military; TRIMS; CHANGES headline)
SEOUL, June 29 (Yonhap) -- South and North Korea failed to discuss South Korean assets seized at a stalled joint tour site in the isolated country, an official said Wednesday, as Pyongyang threatened to retaliate the South over alleged smear campaign against its leaders.
A delegation of South Korean government officials and businessmen returned home from a trip to a scenic mountain resort in the North after their rare meeting with the North collapsed due to procedural differences, the official said.
The development cast further doubt on the fate of troubled tour project, which once served as a key cash cow for the impoverished country.
The North has said it wanted to dispose of South Korea's frozen and seized properties at Mount Kumgang on the North's east coast.
The official said South Korea will take steps to protect property rights of South Korean firms estimated to be about 300 billion won (US$278 million). He did not elaborate and asked not to be identified, citing policy.
The two Koreas launched the program in 1998 as part of moves to boost reconciliation, providing a legitimate source of hard currency to the cash-strapped North.
However, Seoul suspended the tour program in 2008 when a female South Korean tourist was shot dead near the mountain resort. Last year, the North seized or froze several South Korean assets at the resort in anger over the stalled project.
The North has recently announced a law designed to develop the resort as a special zone for international tours.
The rare inter-Korean meeting came as Pyongyang threatened to retaliate the South for slandering the North's top leaders by South Korean frontline units.
The North "will make a clean sweep of the group of traitors through a retaliatory sacred war," an unidentified North Korean government spokesman said in a statement carried by the country's official Korean Central News Agency.
The North's military also issued a similar threat.
North Korea "will take merciless military retaliatory measures with every means and method involved till" South Korea halts all acts of hurting the dignity of its leadership," a spokesman for the Supreme Command of the Korean People's Army said in a separate statement.
North Korea bristles at criticism of its leader Kim Jong-il and his late father and the country's founder, Kim Il-sung, the subject of a massive cult of personality that pervades almost every aspect of North Korean society.
In an apparent indication of mounting tensions, North Korea began discharging water from a dam near the border earlier this week without notifying South Korea, though no damage has been reported, officials said.
In 2009, a similar move by the North caused flash flood in the South and killed six South Koreans.
The development illustrates lingering tensions between the two Koreas since last year when the North torpedoed a South Korean warship and shelled a South Korean frontline island.
North Korea has spurned Seoul's long-standing demand that Pyongyang take responsibility for the attacks that killed 50 South Koreans, keeping the two sides from moving their relations forward.
Also Wednesday, a South Korean expert claimed in a conference that the North could carry out a third nuclear test within a year.
The biggest motive of the possible test is aimed at laying a solid basis for the "prosperous and powerful nation" Pyongyang vowed to build by next year, said Cheon Seong-whun, a research fellow at the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification.
Some experts have also speculated as to the possibility of a third North Korean nuclear test. North Korea conducted two nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009, drawing international condemnation and tightened U.N. sanctions.
entropy@yna.co.kr
SEOUL, June 29 (Yonhap) -- South and North Korea failed to discuss South Korean assets seized at a stalled joint tour site in the isolated country, an official said Wednesday, as Pyongyang threatened to retaliate the South over alleged smear campaign against its leaders.
A delegation of South Korean government officials and businessmen returned home from a trip to a scenic mountain resort in the North after their rare meeting with the North collapsed due to procedural differences, the official said.
The development cast further doubt on the fate of troubled tour project, which once served as a key cash cow for the impoverished country.
The North has said it wanted to dispose of South Korea's frozen and seized properties at Mount Kumgang on the North's east coast.
The official said South Korea will take steps to protect property rights of South Korean firms estimated to be about 300 billion won (US$278 million). He did not elaborate and asked not to be identified, citing policy.
The two Koreas launched the program in 1998 as part of moves to boost reconciliation, providing a legitimate source of hard currency to the cash-strapped North.
However, Seoul suspended the tour program in 2008 when a female South Korean tourist was shot dead near the mountain resort. Last year, the North seized or froze several South Korean assets at the resort in anger over the stalled project.
The North has recently announced a law designed to develop the resort as a special zone for international tours.
The rare inter-Korean meeting came as Pyongyang threatened to retaliate the South for slandering the North's top leaders by South Korean frontline units.
The North "will make a clean sweep of the group of traitors through a retaliatory sacred war," an unidentified North Korean government spokesman said in a statement carried by the country's official Korean Central News Agency.
The North's military also issued a similar threat.
North Korea "will take merciless military retaliatory measures with every means and method involved till" South Korea halts all acts of hurting the dignity of its leadership," a spokesman for the Supreme Command of the Korean People's Army said in a separate statement.
North Korea bristles at criticism of its leader Kim Jong-il and his late father and the country's founder, Kim Il-sung, the subject of a massive cult of personality that pervades almost every aspect of North Korean society.
In an apparent indication of mounting tensions, North Korea began discharging water from a dam near the border earlier this week without notifying South Korea, though no damage has been reported, officials said.
In 2009, a similar move by the North caused flash flood in the South and killed six South Koreans.
The development illustrates lingering tensions between the two Koreas since last year when the North torpedoed a South Korean warship and shelled a South Korean frontline island.
North Korea has spurned Seoul's long-standing demand that Pyongyang take responsibility for the attacks that killed 50 South Koreans, keeping the two sides from moving their relations forward.
Also Wednesday, a South Korean expert claimed in a conference that the North could carry out a third nuclear test within a year.
The biggest motive of the possible test is aimed at laying a solid basis for the "prosperous and powerful nation" Pyongyang vowed to build by next year, said Cheon Seong-whun, a research fellow at the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification.
Some experts have also speculated as to the possibility of a third North Korean nuclear test. North Korea conducted two nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009, drawing international condemnation and tightened U.N. sanctions.
entropy@yna.co.kr
