Inter-Korean tourism talks to be held as scheduled next week: Seoul

(ATTN: RECASTS headline, lead; UPDATES with ministry's statement, details)
SEOUL, Feb. 6 (Yonhap) -- Inter-Korean tourism talks will be held as scheduled
next week, despite North Korea's failure to include a higher-level official in
its delegation, Seoul officials said Saturday.
On Jan. 25, North Korea proposed a border meeting with South Korea to resume
cross-border tours that have been suspended for nearly one and a half years but
the Seoul government counter-proposed that it be held on Monday.
South Korea implicitly conditioned its counter-proposal on the North's agreement
to include a high-level official in its negotiating team but the list of the
North's delegates as sent to Seoul on Friday fell short of Seoul's expectations.
On Saturday, South Korea said without elaborating that the meeting will be held
as scheduled on Monday at the North's border city of Kaesong.
"The two Koreas exchanged the list of delegates on Friday," the Unification
Ministry said in a statement. "Our delegates will attend the working-level
talks."
The North's delegates are all from its semi-official party group, called the
Asia-Pacific Peace Committee that handles inter-Korean relations. South Korea had
hoped that they include a higher-level official representing the government or
party.
The main topic of Monday's talks will be terms of cross-border tours to two
scenic and historical sites in North Korea -- Mount Kumgang and Kaesong, an
ancient capital in the North's southwestern border region -- that have been
suspended since the summer of 2008.
South Korea ordered a halt to the tours for its citizens after one of its female
visitors was shot dead after straying into a restricted military zone at the
mountain resort.
Safety of South Korean tourists is expected to top the agenda at Monday's talks,
according to South Korean officials.
The talks come amid mixed signals from North Korea in its attitude toward South
Korea. Last week, North Korea lopped hundreds of artillery shells into waters
near its border with South Korea in the Yellow Sea. The area is the site of
bloody inter-Korean naval clashes in November, 1999 and 2002.
Before the firing of artillery shells, North Korea held border talks with South
Korea to demand higher wages for its workers being hired by small-size South
Korean companies operating at a joint inter-Korean factory park on its soil.
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 tour 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.
ejkim@yna.co.kr
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