N. Korea says Seoul unwilling to resume mountain tour program

By Tony Chang
SEOUL, Nov. 25 (Yonhap) -- North Korea slammed Seoul again Wednesday for
apparently showing little intent to resume a mountain tour program in the North,
a much-needed source of dollars that was shut down last year after a tourist was
shot dead by a soldier for unclear reasons.
North Korea has been nudging the South to reopen cross-border tours to its Mount
Kumgang resort. Seoul suspended the program after a tourist was shot and killed
in July last year after wandering into a restricted military zone.
A senior North Korean official met last week with the chief of the tour operator,
Hyundai Group, and suggested the North may meet a key condition the South has
demanded for resuming the tours -- allowing a South Korea-led fact-finding team
to investigate the shooting.
Seoul's Unification Ministry has played down the proposal because it came through
Hyundai and not through the two countries' official communications line.
According to a statement carried by the North's Korean Central News Agency, a
spokesman for the Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee said that Seoul was showing
a "very dishonest attitude," instead of "good faith and magnanimity."
The statement described Hyun In-taek, Seoul's unification minister, as an
"anti-reunification" figure, and underscored that the resumption of the tour is
impossible with such people working in the ministry.
"All facts go to clearly prove that the ulterior intention of the south side
authorities ... is not to resume Mt. Kumgang tourism," the statement said.
It further added that South Korea only seeks to take an active part in United
Nations Security Council sanctions over the North's past atomic tests.
The Mount Kumgang tours have earned the cash-strapped country US$487 million in
tour fees since they began in 1998. More than 1.9 million South Koreans have
visited the picturesque mountain on the North's southeast coast.
odissy@yna.co.kr
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