N. Korea agrees to date for tour talks, South steps up demand

SEOUL, Feb. 3 (Yonhap) -- South Korea demanded Wednesday that North Korea send
delegates with the authority to negotiate safety measures for South Korean
tourists when the sides hold talks next week on resuming cross-border tours, an
official here said.
The tours to Mount Kumgang on the North's east coast and the border town of
Kaesong in its west were suspended in 2008, when inter-Korean ties deteriorated
and a South Korean tourist was shot dead after entering a restricted zone at the
mountain resort.
Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung told reporters that the North has
agreed to hold talks Feb. 8 as Seoul had proposed, but the South wants the North
to send more powerful delegates than those Pyongyang had planned to send.
"We demanded that North Korea send a list of delegates with authority to discuss
safety measures," he said, adding his government made the demand through a reply
addressed to a Workers' Party unit in charge of inter-Korean issues.
North Korea said in Wednesday's message that unspecified officials of the
country's Asia-Pacific Peace Committee will represent the country at the talks.
But South Korean officials believe that the committee is not high-level enough to
discuss safety measures.
South Korea has demanded that a joint full investigation into the shooting death
of the tourist in 2008 be allowed and measures to guarantee the safety of South
Korean visitors be implemented before it considers resuming the cross-border
tours.
North Korea had proposed last month that the talks be held in late January. South
Korea responded to the offer by calling for the talks to be held on Feb. 8.
Mount Kumgang tours earned the North over US$480 million in fees during the last
decade. More than 1.9 million South Koreans have visited the mountain since the
tours opened in 1998 under an agreement between North Korean leader Kim Jong-il
and Hyundai Group founder Chung Ju-yung.
Earlier Wednesday, North Korea stepped up pressure on South Korea to agree to
resume the cross-border tours that observers say would lead to increased revenue
for the impoverished communist country.
In an editorial carried in the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the
ruling Workers' Party, the North argued that its talks with the South on resuming
cross-border tour ventures would produce a "breakthrough" in their political
relations.
"The issue of resuming tours to Mount Kumgang is a litmus test of the South's
willingness to improve inter-Korean relations," the paper was quoted as saying by
Uriminzokkiri, official Web site of a North Korean office for reunification.
(END)