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(LEAD) Hyundai Asan in final day of tours to Kaesong
SEOUL, Nov. 28 (Yonhap) -- A group of South Korean tourists left for North Korea's ancient border city of Kaesong, a South Korean tour operator said Friday, in the final sightseeing tour to the North as Seoul was forced to suspend the tour project amid deteriorating inter-Korean ties.
About a year after the first South Korean tourists began visiting historic sites in Kaesong, about 70 kilometers northwest of Seoul, the tour program, the second for South Koreans, has become the latest victim of escalating tensions between the two Koreas.
The move comes as North Korea vowed Monday to halt the one-day tour to Kaesong and strictly restrict cross-border passages from next week, in its first retaliatory action against South Korea's hard-line policy toward Pyongyang.
Major tours to Mt. Geumgang -- the first North Korean destination opened to tourists -- on the North's east coast have been been halted since July when a South Korean tourist was fatally shot dead by a North Korean soldier.
Friday's final tour means two cross-border tour projects to North Korea, launched by two liberal predecessors of President Lee Myung-bak over the past decade, will both be closed.
About 200 South Korean tourists were visiting a scenic waterfall, a historic temple and other sites in Kaesong and returning to Seoul later in the day, said an official at Hyundai Asan Corp., the North Korean business arm of South Korea's Hyundai conglomerate.
"I feel sad that this is the last tour to Kaesong," said a 55-year-old Choi Hong-dae, one of the last group of South Korean tourists, at the South Korean CIQ near the the southern demilitarized zone in Paju, north of Seoul.
"But I expect to go there again when inter-Korean ties return normal," Choi said.
Hyundai Asan also hoped the tour program to resume soon.
"While the Kaesong tour is halted owing to circumstances beyond control, we believe the tour will resume soon," the Hyundai Asan official said.
On Saturday and Sunday, Hyundai Asan will withdraw most of its staff and vehicles from Kaesong as North Korea demanded.
Relations between South and North Korea have deteriorated since conservative President Lee took office in February with a hard-line policy on the North, saying Pyongyang should live up to its pledge of abandoning its nuclear weapons program.
In response, North Korea has accused the government of President Lee of ignoring accords reached at inter-Korean summits in 2000 and 2007.
It remains uncertain whether North Korea's get-tough measures would affect the last inter-Korean business project, a sprawling industrial zone in Kaesong where 88 South Korean firms employ about 35,000 North Korean workers and produce kitchen wares, clothes and watches.
On Monday, however, North Korea stopped short of taking any action against the Kaesong industrial complex, saying that it should not be a "scapegoat" of inter-Korean tension.
The industrial complex, which pays North Korean workers US$70 monthly, is seen as a major cash cow for the impoverished North.
(END)
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