S. Korea cautious on N. Korea's talks offer for restarting Mt. Kumgang tours

SEOUL, Aug. 19 (Yonhap) -- South Korea has taken a cautious stance on North Korea's proposal to hold a meeting to discuss the resumption of a stalled inter-Korean tourism project, officials here said Monday. A day earlier, Pyongyang proposed a working-level meeting to take place on Aug. 22 to discuss resuming South Korean tours to Mount Kumgang, a scenic resort on its east coast. The mountain resort just north of the inter-Korean border has been halted since 2008 after a South Korean tourist was fatally shot by a North Korean guard. "As I said earlier, the (South Korean) government will determine the stance later after factoring in a variety of circumstances comprehensively," unification ministry spokesman Kim Hyung-suk said in a press briefing. The North's proposal came as it accepted Seoul's calls to hold a working-level meeting on Friday to discuss the resumption of reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War. Seoul proposed the reunions around Chuseok, a Korean equivalent of Thanksgiving Day, which falls on Sept. 19 this year. "The government maintains a principle of separating the issue of the family reunions from the tourism project," said a unification ministry official who declined to be identified. Though Pyongyang agreed upon the date of the talks on the reunions, it said the meeting should take place at the Mount Kumgang resort instead of the truce village of Panmunjom as Seoul proposed. "Yesterday, I reiterated my suggestion to hold the (reunion) talks at the truce village," spokesman Kim said. "Once again, we expect the North's active response to our proposal." The Seoul government said some 73,000 people in South Korea alone have requested to meet with their relatives in the North, and about 80 percent of them are over the age of 70, adding urgency to the issue of family reunions. So far, there have been a total of 18 reunions, with the most recent held in late 2010. Family reunions were initially proposed by South Korean President Park Geun-hye during her Liberation Day address on Thursday, a day after the two Koreas reached a landmark deal to reopen a joint inter-Korean factory zone in North Korea that has been closed for more than four months. The Kaesong Industrial Complex was abruptly shut in early April when the North pulled out its 53,000 workers hired by 123 South Korean plants, citing heightened tensions caused by the South's joint military exercises with the United States as its reason for the shutdown. Meanwhile, another annual joint military drills by the two allies kicked off on Monday for a 12 day run. Earlier in the day, 32 South Korean officials made a cross-border trip to Kaesong, the second of its kind following the resumption deal, to inspect the facilities for electricity, telecommunication and water there as a preparatory step in normalizing operations there, the ministry said. Denying a media report, the unification ministry, however, stressed that signs of eased tensions on the Korean Peninsula do not mean that South Korea is considering lifting sanctions imposed on its communist neighbor following the deadly sinking of a South Korean naval ship in 2010 that killed 46 of its sailors. The media report on Monday by Seoul's daily Donga Ilbo said that South Korea began to lift the so-called May 24 measures it announced in 2010 after its investigation linked Pyongyang to the sinking of Cheonan warship near the Yellow Sea border with North Korea in March that year. Pyongyang has denied any involvement in the torpedo attack. "As you are well aware, the May 24 measures were directly caused by the sinking of the warship Cheonan. So the government's stance remains unchanged that its lifting (of sanctions) is possible only when North Korea takes responsible measures that can be understood by our people," the ministry spokesman said. South Korea has maintained that the North must come up with measures that will prevent a repeat of such an attack as it instigated the provocation. graceoh@yna.co.kr (END)