N. Korean media blasts South's minister as Seoul remains silent on mountain tour

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
after 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 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, saying it does not regard the Nov. 18 proposal as an
"official" state-to-state offer because it came through Hyundai.
Observers say the ministry is reluctant to take any inter-Korean action that may
pump cash into the North until there is progress over multilateral diplomacy over
its nuclear program.
The U.S. special envoy for North Korea policy, Stephen Bosworth, is set to visit
Pyongyang next month to try to bring it back to six-party negotiations.
Separately, 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.
Ministry sources say Ri Jong-hyuk, vice chairman of the North's Korean
Asia-Pacific Peace Committee in charge of 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 in the North.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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