North Korea said yesterday it would expel South Koreans from a mountain resort meant to symbolize the peninsular neighbors’ improving relations amid rising tension over the July 11 shooting death of a southern tourist there.
Pyongyang’s military unit at its Diamond Mountain resort said in a statement it would begin today ejecting from the resort South Korean personnel deemed “unnecessary” because the South “is pushing the North-South relations to a graver stage.”
North Korea has said an army guard shot dead the 53-year-old South Korean housewife vacationing at the resort because she entered a restricted military area and ignored a warning to stop.
PHOTO: AFP
South Korea suspended its decade-old mountain tour program in response, demanding the North allow South Korean investigators into the area. About 220 South Korean workers and businessmen remain in the North Korean resort, South Korean media reports said.
South Korea has sought international support to pressure the North to accept an investigation. Last week, US President George W. Bush said during his visit to Seoul that he was urging the North Korean authorities to engage in inter-Korean dialogue to resolve the case and prevent any similar incidents.
In the military statement released yesterday, the North criticized South Korean President Lee Myung-bak for “clinging to the coattail of his American master” and “begging him to urge the North to opt for ‘probing the truth’” of the shooting case.
“The Lee Myung-bak group had better face up to the serious situation and behave with discretion,” said the statement, carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.
Pyongyang also said it would take “strong military sanctions” against any breach of rules that take place around the mountain resort, adding it will limit the passage of South Koreans and their vehicles through the border crossing leading there.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry said it would comment on the latest North Korean statement later yesterday.
Ties between the divided Koreas have been strained since Lee took office in February with a promise to get tougher on Pyongyang. The North subsequently cut off all government-level contact with Seoul.
On Friday, athletes from the two Koreas marched separately in the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. The Koreas had marched together in the same uniform under the blue and white “unification flag” in major international sporting events since the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
“I was disappointed as South and North Korea couldn’t march together,” Lee said yesterday after attending the opening ceremony. “I believe what is more important in South-North Korean ties is practical improvement in their relations. The easiest way [to achieve that] is through sports.”
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