North Korea scrapped a troubled joint tourism project with South Korea, saying
Thursday it will freeze some South Korean facilities at its eastern mountain resort and expel personnel from them, a setback for the already shaky inter-Korean relations.
The communist country said it will reopen its Mount Kumgang resort with a new partner, but did not disclose its name or nationality. Analysts here have speculated that the North may choose a Chinese tour operator.
The Unification Ministry in Seoul, which handles cross-border exchanges, said in a statement it regrets the North's decision and warned "all consequences will lie with" Pyongyang. Tours to the mountain earned the impoverished North millions of U.S. dollars before they ground to a halt over the shooting death of a South Korean tourist by a North Korean guard in July 2008.
Seoul says the tours will not resume until Pyongyang apologizes, allows an on-site probe and makes state-tostate promises for tourist safety. Pyongyang says it has done everything to relieve concerns.
"South Korean authorities will dearly pay the prices for driving inter-Korean relations to ruins by balking at the resumption of Mount Kumgang tours," an unidentified spokesperson for the North's tourism development organization said.
In the statement carried by its official Korean Central News Agency, the North also threatened to "entirely reevaluate" its joint industrial park with South Korea near its west coast if relations between the sides do not improve.
The Kaesong industrial complex, which links more than 110 South Korean firms with some 42,000 North Korean workers, is the last remaining symbol of reconciliation between the divided states.
The announcement came after the North summoned South Korean company officials late last month to the resort, threatening to seize their assets if they did not show up for a real estate survey.
During the survey, the North warned of "extraordinary measures" if South Korea did not agree by the start of this month to resume its cross-border tours to the Mount Kumgang resort. South Korea's government did not attend the survey, even though members of the state-run Korean Tourism Organization did. North Korea, which froze the Seoul-run family reunion center and fire station early this month,
said Thursday it will also freeze KTO-run assets, including a duty free shop and a hot spring facility, adding themove is only a "first-step measure."
Dozens of South Korean firms, including Hyundai Asan, the chief operator of the now suspended tours, possess 360 billion won (US$320 million) worth of real estate properties in the tourist zone.
Nearly 2 million South Koreans visited the scenic mountain within the decade before the suspension in 2008, providing the sanctions-hit North with hard currency. An incipient joint tour project to the ancient city of Kaesong near the west coast has also been halted since late 2008 amid deteriorating inter-Korean relations.
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