Inter-Korean tour talks to be held on Monday as scheduled: S Korean gov't

The inter-Korean working-level talks on cross-border tours will be held on Monday as scheduled, Seoul's Ministry of Unification said Saturday in a press statement.

South Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) exchanged the list of delegates on Friday via Panmunjom channels, and the Seoul side decided to attend the talks, the ministry said.

According to local media, Kim Nam-shik, director general of the Unification Ministry's inter-Korean exchange bureau, will head the South's delegation, while its counterpart will be led by Kim Ryong- song, senior councilor of the Asia-Pacific Peace Committee handling the inter-Korean ties.

South Korea previously said that an authoritative official who can discuss security issues should head the DPRK's delegation.

In what many see as a peace gesture, the DPRK in early January proposed to hold talks on resuming tours to its mountain resort on the east coast and the border town of Kaesong near the east coast on Jan. 26, but the South Korean government suggested pushing the date back to Feb. 8.

Tours to Mount Kumgang was halted in 2008 soon after a South Korean female tourist was shot to death by a DPRK sentinel, and the tour to the border town was also suspended in the same year, rapidly souring inter-Korean ties that were freezing since South Korean President Lee Myung-bak took office earlier that year with a hard-line approach to the DPRK.

Seoul has since called on Pyongyang to allow a thorough investigation to get to the bottom of the incident at the resort and draw up measures to prevent recurrences, while saying that the DPRK's acceptance of its demands would not automatically lead to the resumption of the tours.

Source: Xinhua