Tourist’s Killing Clouds S. Korean Appeal to the North

SEOUL, South Korea — A soldier fatally shot a South Korean tourist today at a resort at North Korea, prompting the South to suspend a high-profile tourism program just as the president was seeking to repair strained ties with his communist neighbor.The death of the 53-year-old woman, who the North said had ventured into a restricted military area during a pre-dawn stroll at a beach, followed a series of hostile North Korean moves against South Korea’s president, Lee Myung-bak.Since Mr. Lee assumed office in February with a tougher line on dealing with the North, the Pyongyang regime has expelled South Korean officials from joint economic projects, labeled Mr. Lee a “traitor” and warned of renewed fighting between the Koreas.The shooting happened just hours before Mr. Lee went to the new South Korean parliament to deliver a speech extending a peace offering to the North by calling for the resumption of reconciliation talks and offering humanitarian aid.A spokesman for South Korea’s Unification Ministry, Kim Ho-nyeon, announced that the government was suspending tours to the North’s Diamond Mountain resort pending an investigation of the shooting. “We regret that our tourist was killed,” Kim said.Some 1,200 tourists at the resort can complete their trips as scheduled if they choose to do so, leaving as late as Sunday, according to Hyundai Asan, the company that runs tours to Diamond Mountain.The business is a source of much-needed hard currency for impoverished North Korea, which made no official comment on the killing or on Lee’s speech.Mr. Lee was briefed on the shooting just before he headed to the National Assembly for his address, the presidential office said.He told aides to investigate the case thoroughly and called on North Korea to “actively cooperate” with the probe, presidential spokesman, Lee Dong-kwan, said. The spokesman added it was “not appropriate” to connect the speech with the tourist’s death.The two Koreas remain technically at war since their 1950-53 conflict ended in a cease-fire, but they developed warmer ties during a decade of liberal South Korean governments that sought to reverse a half-century of animosity.Mr. Lee, a conservative, took a more critical stance upon assuming the presidency, saying he would not give the North special treatment. He questioned deals reached at two summits between leaders of the North and South and said they should be implemented only if they had economic merit.But today, Mr. Lee softened his tone and said he would respect the earlier summit agreements.“Full dialogue between the two Koreas must resume,” Mr. Lee told parliament. “The South Korean government is willing to engage in serious consultations on how to implement” the summit deals and other previous agreements between the two sides, he said.Analysts said the North was unlikely to accept Mr. Lee’s offer soon. There was no immediate response from the reclusive North, which usually takes its time to acknowledge outside developments.North Korea will watch how Seoul deals with the shooting “as a yardstick to measure whether (Lee’s) proposal is sincere,” said Kim Keun-sik, a professor at Seoul’s University of North Korean Studies.Kim Yong-hyun, a North Korea expert at Dongguk University in Seoul, said the death would “further strain” relations because of the suspension of the tourism program.“But I don’t think it will deal a decisive blow to relations because this appears to be accidental,” he said.A South Korean official involved in international talks on North Korea’s nuclear disarmament that continued today in Beijing called the shooting “tragic” but predicted it would not hinder those negotiations. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks.About 1.9 million visitors, mostly South Koreans, have visited Diamond Mountain since it opened in 1998, including some 190,000 people this year, according to the South’s Unification Ministry.The resort is in a heavily militarized area near the tense border between the Koreas, the world’s last Cold War frontier. Mobile rocket launchers dot the hillsides along the road to the resort and the coast has been home to a major North Korean naval base.North Korea said the shooting victim, Park Wang-ja, walked three-quarters of a mile into a fenced-off military zone, then fled when a soldier shouted for her to stop — and kept running after a warning shot, according to Hyundai Asan.Ms. Park was shot about 5 a.m. some 200 yards from the fence, according to the North, but officials didn’t inform Hyundai Asan for more than six hours, the company said.The woman suffered two gunshot wounds from behind, an official at the hospital in the South Korean city of Sokcho where her body was taken, Cho Yong-seok, said.___Associated Press writers Jae-soon Chang and Jae-hyun Jeong in Seoul and Kwang-tae Kim in Beijing contributed to this report.

Tourist’s Killing Clouds S. Korean Appeal to the North

Tourist’s Killing Clouds S. Korean Appeal to the North

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