SEOUL: A South Korean tour operator said it would launch a programme of trips to the world's last Cold War frontier after its tourism ventures inside communist North Korea were shut down.

Hyundai Asan said the programme beginning May 2 would include visits to the southern edge of the four-kilometre-wide buffer zone dividing the two Koreas.

The programme comes amid high tensions which have stalled the company's tourism programmes to the North's border city of Kaesong and to the Mount Kumgang resort across the frontier on the east coast.

The Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) has split the peninsula since the 1950-53 war. South Korean officials want to develop military-controlled areas abutting the zone as a tourist attraction.

Hyundai Asan said its new programme includes one-day tours costing 46,000 won (34 dollars) per person to border areas at Paju and Yeoncheon, north of Seoul.

Two-day tours to the border area at Yanggu, 175 kilometres northeast of Seoul, and to Mount Sorak on the east coast, will cost 118,000 won.

"Along with trips to front-line fences, tourists will be allowed to see wildlife and other places which remained untouched for decades," a Hyundai Asan official told AFP.

Visitors will not be allowed inside the DMZ itself.

Hyundai Asan said the new programme would help ease its financial woes, which began when a South Korean woman tourist was shot dead when she strayed into a military zone at Kumgang last July.

The Seoul government halted tours to Kumgang after the shooting, while Pyongyang barred the one-day tours to Kaesong city as relations worsened.

The company's other major joint project, the joint industrial complex near Kaesong city, is also facing problems due to sour cross-border ties.

The communist North has expelled hundreds of South Korean staff and restricted access to the Seoul-funded complex.

On March 30 it detained a Hyundai Asan employee for allegedly criticising the North's regime and trying to persuade a local woman worker to defect.

The two Koreas held brief talks last week but the North rebuffed the South's demands for access to the detainee. - AFP/de