North Korea said Thursday it will freeze some South Korean assets at a troubled joint mountain resort in the North, expel South Koreans working at the site and restart the project with a new partner.
The move would be another setback to inter-Korean relations, which have foundered over the past two years after a decade of warming ties.
The two Koreas remain divided by a heavily fortified border but agreed, as part of reconciliation efforts a decade ago, to allow jointly operated tours to a famed mountain resort cherished by Koreans in both countries. The shooting death of a South Korean tourist in 2008 by a North Korean soldier prompted Seoul to suspend the tours to Diamond Mountain.
Later that year, with tensions rising, North Korea halted a popular joint tour to the ancient city of Kaesong. Impoverished North Korea recently expressed a willingness to restart the tour programs, which provide a muchneeded
influx of hard currency.
South Korea, however, said the North must accept its demands for a joint investigation into the tourist's death and the establishment of measures to prevent future incidents. North Korean officials then ordered a survey of South Korean tour operators at the mountain resort, and announced late Thursday that the decision was made to go with a new partner.
Tours of Diamond Mountain will start up again soon with a new partner, an official said in comments carried by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency. He did not give the new partner's name or nationality. Hyundai Asan, the resort's South Korean tour operator, may announce its position Friday, Park Sung-wook, an official with the company, said late Thursday in Seoul.
The North also said it may re-examine another joint project -- an industrial complex in Kaesong -- if Seoul continued to move toward confrontation. More than 110 South Korean factories at Kaesong employ some 42,000 North Korean workers to produce electronics, watches, shoes and utensils.
"We will never remain a passive onlooker to the puppet conservative group's confrontation with the (North) and its smear campaign but take resolute countermeasures one after another," said the unidentified North Korean official
quoted by KCNA. Kim Yong-hyun, a professor at Seoul's Dongguk University, said the move is aimed at pressuring South Korea into estarting the Diamond Mountain tours. He said the new partner could be a Chinese company.
"The North is using brinkmanship tactics to extract concessions from the South," Kim said.
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