It is regrettable that North Korea has come up with a threat to confiscate real estate owned by South Koreans in the Mt. Geumgang resort. On Thursday, the North's Asia-Pacific Peace Committee said it will review all of the real estate inside the scenic tourist district beginning March 25. The committee, a state agency in charge of inter-Korean exchanges, asked the owners of the real estate and related officials to visit the resort by the day of the scheduled probe. And it threatened to seize all assets of those failing to meet the deadline.
No doubt the North is trying to put more pressure on the South to resume the suspended cross-border tourism project. The threat sounds like a make-or-break ultimatum. The move came after officials of the two Koreas failed to narrow their differences over the terms of the tour resumption during their talks last month. The South is sticking to a firm position that the project cannot resume normal operation unless the North fully guarantees the safety of southern tourists. The tour program came to a halt after a South Korean female tourist was shot dead by a North Korean soldier in Mt. Geumgang in July 2008.
Disappointingly, the North has continued to turn down the South's three-point demand: an investigation of the shooting death, a measure to avoid repetition of such a tragic incident and a complete guarantee of the personal safety of tourists. Instead, it has requested that the South first resume the tour program from next month and then resolve the thorny issue later. It has also called for the restart of another inter-Korean tour package to Gaeseong this month, which was suspended in December 2008 amid strained ties between the two rivals.
It is all the more perplexing that the North has even threatened to look for a new business partner to revive the two tour programs in April if its request is not met by the South. This simply is the North's attempt to shirk its responsibility for the tragic incident, while bullying the South into caving in to its undue pressure and irrational demand. What's for sure is that the Seoul government will never compromise its effort to protect its people's lives and assets no matter where they are.
The recalcitrant North should realize that its brinkmanship tactics will not work to reopen the tourism project designed to promote inter-Korean exchanges and reconciliation. It is really bad that the Kim Jong-il regime is only engrossed in making money from cross-border tours without paying heed to mutual trust and respect which have been shattered by its saber rattling and nuclear blackmail.
The impoverished North is in a hurry to restart the tourism projects in a desperate bid to pocket badly-needed cash. It has been feeling an acute pain arising from the U.N. sanctions imposed against the military regime for launching long-range missiles and conducting the second nuclear test last spring. It has invited all its troubles by backpedalling on its commitments to inter-Korean rapprochement, denuclearization and peace. We call on the North to take sincere efforts to solve the tourism deadlock and other pending issues through dialogue to move toward national reconciliation and co-prosperity on the Korean Peninsula.