Asia-Pacific

Tourism row deepens between ROK, DPRK

By Kim Junghyun (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-04-24 06:48

SEOUL - Conflicts deepened between the two Koreas Friday over ill-fated cross-border tour programs, as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) announced earlier in the day it will confiscate Republic of Korea (ROK) properties inside a resort at Mount Kumgang.

In a statement carried out by the official Korea Central News Agency, Pyongyang said it will either take over the ownership of the frozen assets or hand them over to a new business partner, the strongest measure in a recent series of steps toward nullifying all inter-Korean tourism deals.

Tours to a scenic mountain and a historic border town, flourished under a decade of liberal rule of former Presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, have been a long-standing but fragile symbol of peace on the Korean Peninsula, still divided in half following a civil war half a decade ago.

Mount Kumgang tours, launched in 1998 and run by ROK's Hyundai Asan Corp, had attracted more than 1.95 million ROK tourists until a fatal shooting incident put the tour program on hold in 2008.

Tours to a border town of Keasong, home to an ancient capital of an early Korean dynasty, were launched in 2005 as a pilot project and fully ran since December 2007, attracting several hundreds of tourists on a daily basis.

With the conservative President Lee Myung-bak in office, which already strained the inter-Korean ties by his pledge to get tougher on the northern neighbor, Kumgang tours were completely suspended after a female tourist was shot dead by a DPRK soldier.

Kaesong tours were also suspended in the same year, further souring Seoul-Pyongyang ties.

Eight local firms, including Hyundai Asan and the state-run Korea Tourism Organization (KTO), own properties in the resort area worth 360 billion won ($31 million) in total. Hyundai Asan President Cho Gun-sik, meanwhile, resigned over financial woes of the company.

The five facilities set to be confiscated include a Seoul-run reunion center for separated families in the two Koreas, a duty free shop, a hot spring, a culture center and a fire station. Observers say confiscation of the reunion center will be especially outrageous for Seoul, which considers issues of separated families a humanitarian challenge.

The DPRK's move Friday, however stern, is still a largely expected one, as the country previously threatened to take "extreme measures" against ROK over its perceived reluctance to reopen lucrative tours, once an easy source of hard cash.

For Pyongyang, taking such measures were not the first cards on the table. It had made apparent peace overtures earlier this year by inviting Seoul to a series of working-level talks over inter-Korean projects, including the tour programs, all of which ended without any significant breakthrough.

Seoul reiterated its position at the talks that safety guarantees for its tourists and a proper investigation into the tragic incident are needed before reopening the tours, while Pyongyang claimed such issues have been already addressed.

With talks proven hardly effective, the DPRK has now turned to tactics more familiar to Seoul - warnings and rhetoric.

"The situation has reached such an extreme phase that it is at the crossroads of a war or peace, much less thinking of the resumption of the tour. It is quite natural that we can no longer show generosity and tolerance to the south side under this situation," it said in a recent statement.

Starting off with putting up "keep-out" stickers on five facilities at the resort and kicking out some of the employees there, Pyongyang has further ratcheted up tensions with denunciations against the ROK government.

The unilateral abrogation of contracts or agreements between the two Koreas contradicts the DPRK's internal law and violates international customs, and all responsibilities lie with Pyongyang, the unification ministry has said, calling the moves "regrettable."

Xinhua

(China Daily 04/24/2010 page12)