NK Issues Ultimatum on Tour Program
By Lee Tae-hoon
Staff Reporter
North Korea has issued an ultimatum to South Korea, threatening to terminate its contracts on joint tour programs with a South Korean firm, a pro-Pyongyang journal said.
The ultimatum came out Sunday after the North threatened on March 4 to nullify its contracts with Hyundai Asan in the South for tours to Mt. Geumgang and Gaeseong, both in the North, unless the South’s Lee Myungbak administration quickly resumes the tourism programs suspended two years ago after the shooting death of a South Korean tourist.
“It was the last opportunity and warning against the South Korean government,” Unification News, a weekly journal, reported in its March 13 issue, posted Sunday on the Web site “Uriminzokkiri.”
The publication underlined that the South should not ignore its warning.
“The South should pay attention to the remarks of the spokesman for the North’s Asia-Pacific Peace Committee (APPC) if it does not want to put inter-Korean relations to an irrevocable and a full confrontational stage,” the weekly said.
An unidentified APPC spokesman said that if the South Korean government continues to block travel routes while making false accusations, the North will be left with no choice but to take extreme measures.
The spokesman also expressed the North’s willingness to unilaterally call off contracts and freeze South Korean property in the North if the South fails to meet its demands.
Officials from South and North Korea held a fresh round of talks early last month, but failed to reach an agreement on measures that will ensure the safety of South Korean tourists traveling to the communist nation.
Seoul has been also demanding that Pyongyang apologize for the death of the female South Korean tourist at the Mt. Geumgang resort in 2008.
However, Pyongyang claims that it has already provided a full explanation on the shooting and promised that such incidents would never take place again, the two conditions Seoul had requested before the tours can be resumed.