S. Korea resumes cruise tour to North

S. Korea resumes cruise tour to North

SEOUL (AFP): South Korea, seeking to mend ragged ties with North Korea, on Sunday allowed the resumption of suspended cruise boat tours to the famine-stricken nation despite its growing missile threat.

South Korean tourists will be allowed to visit North Korea's scenic Mount Kumgang resort site this week, the unification ministry said.

The green light came after tour operators, the giant Hyundai Group, secured a new guarantee from North Korea on the personal safety of South Korean tourists.

The ministry said the resumption reflected South Korea's efforts to improve ties with North Korea which has boycotted inter-Korean talks on family reunions over a naval battle between the two Koreas, still technically at war.

"It will also contribute to easing growing tensions over North Korea's preparations to test-fire a new ballistic missile," it said.

The ministry, however, indicated the tours could falter again if North Korea went ahead with its missile launch.

Pyongyang last August fired a medium-range rocket over Japan, prompting warnings in Washington and Seoul that a further launch would lead to the severance of an aid lifeline for North Korea.

The tour project, launched by Hyundai last November, was suspended on June 20 when North Korea detained a South Korean housewife for allegedly trying to entice a North Korean nature warden into defecting while on a cruise visit.

"The government decided to resume the tour as we judged that the safety of tourists would be guaranteed in a more secure manner," Hwang Ha-Soo, a ministry official, said.

Hyundai was also allowed to remit US$8 million to North Korea for entrance fees and other expenses, he said.

The tours had taken some 86,000 South Koreans to North Korea, earning the impoverished country more than $150 million in desperately-needed foreign exchange.

Under an agreement signed last week in Beijing, North Korea will deport any South Korean tourists who make provocative remarks during tours to Kumgang, the ministry said.

The agreement spelled out the level of fines in case of violations by tourists and called for Hyundai and North Korea to form a steering committee to handle serious crimes.

The agreement contained more concrete terms on the protection of tourists, South Korean officials said.

The tours were suspended when Min Young-Mi, a 36-year-old mother-of-two, was detained for bragging about the prosperous lives of two successful North Korean defectors living in the capitalist South.

Pyongyang has insisted she was a spy. But it has promised to go ahead with the tours.

Min's detention came as inter-Korean tensions were ratcheted up over a clash in the Yellow Sea between South and North Korean gunboats that left a northern torpedo boat sunk and five other vessels seriously damaged.

The sea conflict also led to the rupture of inter-Korean talks in July on the issue of reuniting families separated by the division of the peninsula in 1945 and the 1950-53 conflict.