SEOUL, July 10 (Yonhap) -- The total number of South and North Koreans visiting each other's country fell nearly seven percent in the first five months of 2012 from a year earlier, the Seoul government said Tuesday, as tensions persist over the North's deadly attacks on the South in recent years.

   A total of 47,432 South Koreans visited North Korea in the January-May period, while no North Koreans visited the South, according to data from the Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs. The figure is down 6.9 percent from the same period last year, when the number of inter-Korean visits reached 50,925, including 13 North Koreans who visited the South.

   South and North Koreans are not allowed to visit each other's country without permission from their respective governments, as the two sides remain in a technical state of war following the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

   The vast majority of South Korean visitors, or 47,404, traveled to the North for business, while the remaining 28 entered the communist state for humanitarian projects or socio-cultural exchanges, the ministry said.

   The number of inter-Korean visits peaked at 186,775 in 2008 before dropping to 120,862 in 2009 and 116,047 last year. The downward trend was apparently triggered by the shooting death of a South Korean tourist in North Korea in 2008, and the North's two deadly attacks on the South in 2010. A total of 50 South Koreans, mostly soldiers, were killed in the separate attacks on a South Korean warship and border island.

   hague@yna.co.kr
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