Yonhap
12/6/2006
Byun Duk-kun
Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok returned to South Korea Wednesday after a two-day visit to North Korea aimed at rallying support for a cross-border tourism program criticized by the United States.
The South Korean government’s point man on North Korea arrived in the country’s eastern city of Goseong shortly after crossing the heavily-fortified border with North Korea around 5 p.m.
Lee was the highest-ranking South Korean official to visit the South Korean-developed tourist destination in Mount Geumgang since the communist North tested a nuclear device about two months ago.
The visit was geared towards meeting South Korean officials and businesspeople at the North Korean resort, but it followed Washington’s intensified criticism against the tourism program.
The United States had long opposed the inter-Korean tourism program, but never too explicitly. It asked the Seoul government to halt the country’s cross-border project with the North after Pyongyang conducted its first nuclear weapons test on Oct. 9.
The Mount Geumgang tourism program appears to be “designed to give money to North Korean authorities,” Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said while traveling here in October.
Hill represents Washington in international negotiations aimed at persuading the North to abandon its nuclear ambitions. The talks are also attended by the two Koreas, Japan, China and Russia.
Seoul remained taciturn on the U.S. demand, only taking what U.S. critics called “eye-washing measures.”
The unification minister, however, said the tourism program must “continue” and “be developed further.”
“We must never take a break from trying to ease tension between the North and South Korea, no matter how difficult the times and conditions are,” the minister said while meeting with reporters at the North Korean resort,
“In that sense, these projects (with North Korea) must continue to be developed and widened,” he added.
Seoul was never expected to halt, let alone suspend, the tourism program, but the minister’s remarks come amid international efforts to punish the North for its nuclear test.
Shortly after the Oct. 9 test, the United Nations Security Council approved a resolution that prohibited the transfer to North Korea of any financial resources or assets that can benefit the communist nation’s nuclear and weapons of mass destruction programs.
Millions of dollars have been paid to Pyongyang since the Mount Geumgang resort opened in 1998, while Hyundai Asan, the South Korean developer of the resort, regularly pays large amounts of money to the North in the form of admission fees levied on South Korean tourists traveling there.
The South Korean government claims the money is unlikely to be used for the North’s nuclear or WMD programs, though it admits there is no way of knowing for certain.
The U.N. Security Council has yet to decide whether Seoul’s continued, and apparently renewed, support for the Mount Geumgang tourism program runs counter to its North Korea sanctions resolution.
“I believe no one can dispute the positive effects that the Mount Geumgang tourism program and the Kaesong industrial complex project have had on North-South relations,” said Lee.
The unification minister has offered to step down from his Cabinet post and is expected to be replaced next week by Lee Jae-joung, senior vice chairman of the presidential National Unification Advisory Council.
He was scheduled to arrive in Seoul later in the day.
