Divided Koreas hold talks on resuming cross-border tours

SEOUL, Feb. 8 (Yonhap) -- Officials from North and South Korea opened talks
Monday on ways to resume suspended cross-border tours that could generate
much-needed cash for the impoverished communist neighbor.
The tours to Mount Kumgang on the east and the historic border town of Kaesong on
the west were suspended in 2008 due to deteriorating ties between the two Koreas
and the shooting death of a South Korean tourist by a North Korean guard at the
mountain.
Details of Monday's discussions were not immediately known. But Hong Yang-ho,
Seoul's vice unification minister, indicated earlier in the day that his
government will not agree to resume the cross-border tours -- which had raised
Pyongyang hundreds of million of U.S. dollars -- unless the North agrees to a set
of South Korean demands.
"The demands will be put out exactly as they were previously delivered to the
North," Hong told reporters in Seoul, meaning a joint on-site investigation into
the death of the South Korean tourist in July 2008, a set of safety measures and
a promise by the North to guarantee the protection of future visitors.
The talks in the North Korean border city of Kaesong come as Pyongyang 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 for 42 days since he crossed into
the Stalinist country across from China with a goal of calling to attention human
rights conditions in North Korea.
South Korea hopes the string 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 last held their summit in 2007, the second in its series.
North Korea says it will not return to the nuclear talks unless the international
communist 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.
The six-party 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)