N. Korea sends list of delegates to talks on cross-border tours

SEOUL, Feb. 6 (Yonhap) -- North Korea has sent a list to South Korea of its
delegates to next week's talks on resuming suspended cross-border tours,
officials here said Saturday, following demands from Seoul that the delegates
have a high level of authority.

The communist state earlier said its unidentified officials from its Asia-Pacific
Peace Committee would attend the talks slated for Monday in the North's border
town of Kaesong, according to the officials. The Asia-Pacific committee is a
North Korean state organization handling inter-Korean affairs.
South Korea has asked the North to send government delegates with the authority
to negotiate safety measures for South Korean tourists. But the North said
representatives overseeing tour businesses with complete authority will come to
the scheduled talks.
"We are reviewing whether we accept the North's delegates or not," said an
official at the Unification Ministry.
Tours to Mount Kumgang on the North's east coast and the ancient city of Kaesong
near the west coast were suspended in 2008, when inter-Korean ties were fraying
and a South Korean tourist was shot dead after entering a restricted zone at the
mountain resort.
Having declared its intent to improve relations with the South in its New Year's
message, the North has made a series of proposals this year for talks on
cross-border ventures.
Analysts say the communist state has been cornered into seeking revenue from
outside as it tries to buttress its bid to engineer another hereditary power
succession after having funneled its scarce resources into building weapons of
mass destruction for years.
The Mount Kumgang tours earned the North over US$480 million in fees before they
were suspended. More than 1.9 million South Koreans have visited the mountain
since the tours opened in 1998.
The two Koreas remain technically at war after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a
truce rather than a peace treaty. Despite two summit meetings over the past
decade, their relations frayed quickly after South Korean President Lee Myung-bak
took office in 2008 with a pledge to tie reconciliation to progress in North
Korean denuclearization.
sam@yna.co.kr
(END)

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