Yonhap
Nam Kwang-sik
11/1/2007
Hyundai Asan Co., an affiliate of South Korean conglomerate Hyundai Group, said Thursday that the number of visitors to a mountain resort that it operates in North Korea hit a monthly high in October.
A total of 64,447 people took its tours of the Mt. Geumgang resort on the east coast of the North in October, the company said in a statement, adding that it was the highest monthly figure since Hyundai Asan started the program in November 1998.
The previous monthly record was 43,000 in August 2005. In terms of one-year periods, the tours had the highest number of participants in 2005, when 301,822 people travelled from South Korea to the mountain.
“The rise in the number of tourists was attributable to the second summit between the South and North Korean leaders and growing hopes for the resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue,” a company official said.
The two Koreas held the summit in Pyongyang in early October, with the six-party talks on the North’s denuclearization making tangible progress.
Between 1998 and 2006, about 1.4 million people, including 8,000 foreigners, visited the resort, according to data by Hyundai Asan.
