S Korea, DPRK fail to reach agreement on resuming cross-border tours: media

SEOUL, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- South Korea and the Democratic People' s Republic of Korea (DPRK) held Monday working-level talks on resuming cross-border tours but failed to narrow differences on major issues including ensuring security for South Korean tourists, Seoul's Yonhap News Agency reported.

Kim Nam-sik (C), head of a South Korean delegation, gives a speech in Seoul, South Korea, Feb. 8, 2010. (Xinhua/He Lulu)

The South Korean delegation attended the one-day meeting involving six officials from both sides, which started with a 45- minute morning session at 10 a.m. local time (0100 GMT) and finished at 3:30 p.m. (0630 GMT), according to Seoul's Ministry of Unification.

The south side reiterated its position that the two sides, before reopening tours, need to draw up measures to ensure safety of its tourists and prevent recurrences and launch a thorough investigation into a shooting incident that killed a South Korean tourist in 2008, which resulted in the complete suspension of the tour, Yonhap said.

But the DPRK said the issues Seoul has brought up were already resolved and called for an immediate resumption of the inter- Korean tours, according to Yonhap.

Park Wang-ja, a female tourist in her 50's, was shot to death in July 2008 by a DPRK sentinel after she wandered into a restricted area, but Seoul's request for an on-sight probe was rejected by Pyongyang to much outcry here.

Tours to the historic border town of Kaesong was also suspended in the same year, rapidly souring inter-Korean ties that were already freezing since South Korean President Lee Myung-bak took office earlier that year with a hard-line approach to the DPRK.

After about 19 months of hiatus and in what many in Seoul saw as a peace gesture or an attempt to seek practical interests, the DPRK in early January proposed to hold talks on reopening tours.

Seoul previously said the DPRK's acceptance of its demands would not automatically lead to the resumption of the tours.