Koreas fail to agree on reviving border tours amid tension

(ATTN: UPDATES with results from talks, RECASTS lead, headline; RESTRUCTURES; TRIMS
throughout)
SEOUL, Feb. 8 (Yonhap) -- Officials from the two Koreas failed Monday to agree on
steps to resume long-suspended cross-border tours, the Unification Ministry said,
as tension escalated on the divided peninsula with the North warning of
retaliation against those "seeking to topple its regime."
Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung said the meeting in the North Korean border town
of Kaesong ended "without any significant agreement" as Pyongyang maintained its
refusal to accept South Korean conditions for the resumption of the tours.
The tours to Mount Kumgang on the east coast and the historic town of Kaesong
near the west coast were a rare cash cow for Pyongyang until their suspension in
2008 when a South Korean tourist was shot dead by a North Korean guard at the
mountain.
Chun told reporters that the South Korean delegation demanded during the meeting
that its government officials be granted an on-site probe into the shooting death
of Park Wang-ja in July that year.
"The North Korean side said it has already conducted sufficient investigations
into the incident," Chun said, adding the sides have yet to agree on a date for
another round of talks.
North Korea raised tension while the talks continued in the border town of
Kaesong, issuing a statement by two of its highest security organs that warned of
"all-out strong measures" against those opposing reconciliation or pushing for a
regime breakdown.
"We have world-level ultra-modern striking force and means for protecting
security which have neither yet been mentioned," said the joint statement by the
Ministry of People's Security and the Ministry of State Security.
Chun said the South Korean delegates briefly paid a silent tribute to the
58-year-old South Korean housewife shot dead in 2008 before they started talks
with their North Korean counterparts.
"The North did not balk at our paying a tribute," Chun said earlier in the day,
adding the North Koreans called in their keynote speech for "quick resumption" of
the tour projects.
Park was killed shortly before dawn when she wandered into a restricted zone at
the mountain resort -- which had drawn more than 1.9 million South Koreans since
it began operating in 1998.
The South also demanded the North first guarantee the safety of future South
Korean tourists and implement measures to back its promise, Chun said. North
Korea reiterated its stance that such steps were taken when its leader Kim
Jong-il met in August last year with a South Korean businesswoman in charge of
the tours.
"We don't see it as the problem being solved," Chun said, adding Monday's meeting
-- held in two separate sessions -- amounted to less than two hours.
The one-day meeting came as North Korea gave mixed signals in its approach to the
outside world while under U.N. sanctions imposed on it for its nuclear and
missile tests.
North Korea fired hundreds of artillery shells along its de facto maritime border
with South Korea to raise tension late last month while its top political body,
the National Defense Commission, vowed a "sacred battle" against the South over
reported contingency plans.
South Korea should "immediately disband all the plot-breeding machines and bodies
of the authorities going against national reconciliation," Monday's statement
said, adding the battle has already begun.
Analysts say the North will continue to seek dialogue with the outside world
despite its menacing rhetoric because economic difficulties have prompted it to
do so.
The economic plight for its 24 million people has deepened since North Korea
conducted its second atomic test in May last year, which led to the toughening of
the arms and trade sanctions, they say.
Monday's dialogue 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
to apparently persuade the country 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 crossed into the
Stalinist country from China in December with the goal of publicizing human
rights abuses there.
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 the conflict 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.
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