(LEAD) N. Korea blasts South's minister as Seoul balks at mountain tour

(ATTN: UPDATES with similar criticism by KCNA, ministry spokesman's remarks in paras
4-8, 12, TRIMS headline, CORRECTS N.Korean official's name spelling in para 13)
By Kim Hyun

SEOUL, Nov. 23 (Yonhap) -- North Korean media accused South Korea's unification
minister on Monday of standing in the way of improving inter-Korean relations, as
Seoul remained unresponsive to Pyongyang's request to resume a lucrative tour
program.
North Korea, which is currently under U.N. financial sanctions for its nuclear
and missile tests in spring, has been nudging the South to reopen cross-border
tours to its Mount Kumgang resort. The program came to a halt after a South
Korean tourist was shot and killed in July last year after wandering into a
restricted military zone.
In its most forthright overture yet, a senior North Korean official met with the
chief of the tour operator, Hyundai Group, last week and suggested the North may
meet a key condition the South has demanded for resuming tours -- allowing a
South Korea-led fact-finding investigation into the shooting.
South Korea's Unification Ministry, which handles North Korean affairs, has not
issued a response, playing down the Nov. 18 proposal because it came through
Hyundai.
"Because it has come up during discussions with a private entrepreneur, we don't
see it as an official dialogue proposal between the governments," Unification
Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung said. "As is well known, the government contact
channels are always open and work well, like the one in Panmunjom," he added,
referring to the major inter-Korean hotline at the truce village.
Asked by reporters whether Seoul would respond should the offer come again
through the hotline, Chun refrained from commenting.
Observers say the ministry is reluctant to take any inter-Korean action that may
pump cash into the North while international negotiations over its nuclear
program are still in limbo.
Signs of a breakthrough may come when the U.S. special envoy for North Korea
policy, Stephen Bosworth, visits Pyongyang next month to try to bring it back to
six-party negotiations.
North Korea also blasted Unification Minister Hyun In-taek for conditioning
inter-Korean exchanges on the nuclear issue.
The minister is "ramping around recklessly against the trend of the time, which
is now leaning toward peace and unification," said Radio Pyongyang, a propaganda
radio channel broadcast into South Korea.
The broadcaster called "malicious" the minister's recent assertion that economic
growth remains impossible for North Korea without denuclearization.
The North's Korean Central News Agency also called him a "traitor."
Ministry sources say Ri Jong-hyok, vice-chairman of the North's Korea
Asia-Pacific Peace Committee that oversees inter-Korean relations, met with Hyun
Jeong-eun, the Hyundai chairwoman, at the Mount Kumgang resort and told her that
the North is "willing to cooperate on anything that the South wants."
The comments were a remarkable reversal from Pyongyang's insistence that the
resort area, which is close to the inter-Korean border, is a sensitive military
zone.
The Mount Kumgang tours have earned the cash-strapped country US$487 million in
tour fees since they began in 1998. More than 1.9 million South Koreans have
visited the picturesque mountain on the North's southeast coast.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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