(2nd LD) Koreas hold talks on resuming cross-border tours

(ATTN: UPDATES with details from morning session throughout; RECASTS lead, headline;
ADDS background)

SEOUL, Feb. 8 (Yonhap) -- Officials of the divided Koreas opened talks Monday on
cross-border tours that could help the cash-strapped North ease its deepening
economic trouble if the South agreed to restart them after more than a year of
suspension.
The tours to Mount Kumgang on the east coast and the historic border town of
Kaesong near the west coast had helped Pyongyang raise hundreds of millions of
U.S. dollars until their suspension in 2008 after the shooting death of a South
Korean tourist by a North Korean guard at the mountain.
Chun Hae-sung, spokesman for Seoul's Unification Ministry, said his side demanded
at the meeting in Kaesong that North Korea allow South Korea to conduct an
on-site investigation into the death.
"The North Korean side responded by reiterating its earlier stance on the
matter," he said, suggesting the North repeated its argument that its own probe
has already given an account.
Chun added South Korean delegates started talks with their North Korean
counterparts after they briefly paid a silent tribute to Park Wang-ja, the South
Korean housewife shot dead in July 2008.
Park was killed shortly before dawn when she wandered into a restricted zone at
the resort, which had drawn more than 1.9 million South Koreans since it began
operating in 1998.
"The North did not balk at our paying a tribute," Chun said, adding the North
Koreans called in their keynote speech for "quick resumption" of the tour
projects.
The South demanded the North first guarantee the safety of future South Korean
tourists and implement measures to back its promise, Chun said. He said earlier
in the day that Unification Minister Hyun In-taek has instructed the South Korean
delegation to engage in dialogue with the communist North "firmly and
confidently."
The morning session ended in about 45 minutes. The sides had yet to agree on at
what time they would resume their discussions, Chun said, but he ruled out the
possibility that the talks have ruptured.
The one-day meeting come as North Korea seeks dialogue with South Korea amid U.N.
sanctions for its nuclear test. Analysts say economic difficulties have prompted
the North to seek a softer approach as a means to revive international aid and
trade that has shriveled amid tension over its missile and nuclear testing.
The meeting also comes as U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's special envoy is
set to visit North Korea this week while a senior Chinese envoy is in Pyongyang
on a trip that observers say is aimed at persuading the North to return to
six-nation talks on its nuclear arms programs.
Wang Jiarui, head of the Chinese Communist Party's International Department, may
also be carrying an invitation for North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to come to
Beijing, they say. Wang has met Kim in his four previous trips to Pyongyang since
2004.
In an apparent conciliatory gesture toward the United States, North Korea on
Saturday released a U.S. missionary it had held since he stepped into the
Stalinist country across from China in December with a goal of calling to
attention human rights conditions there.
South Korea hopes the series of signs indicating a thaw on the divided peninsula
could lead to another summit with North Korea this year, but only if the North
agrees to discuss its nuclear arms ambitions in a concrete manner.
The sides, which have held two separate rounds of talks this year on their joint
industrial park in Kaesong, last held a summit in 2007 -- the second after the
initial one in June 2000.
North Korea says it will not return to the nuclear talks unless the international
community lifts sanctions on it. Pyongyang also says Washington must launch
separate negotiations on formally ending the 1950-53 Korean War, saying the truce
signed at the end of it feeds U.S. hostilities against it and hinders the
six-party talks.
The aid-for-denuclearization talks, which began in 2003 and have not been held
since December 2008, group the two Koreas, the U.S., Japan, Russia and host
China.
(END)

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