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SEOUL: South Korea on Monday ignored an offer by the North to resume cross border tours, suspended since a housewife was shot dead by soldiers in 2008, because it did not come through official channels.
The offer came last week when Hyun Jung-Eun, head of Seoul's Hyundai Group, met with Ri Jong-Hyuk, a senior North Korean official in charge of inter-Korean projects.
A Hyundai subsidiary runs all inter-Korean tourism and business projects.
The South's unification ministry said it would not respond to the North's latest overture because it came through Hyundai.
"Our government does not regard it as an official proposal," spokesman Chun Hae-Sung told reporters.
Before the trips can resume, the two governments must hold talks to work out concrete accords on the safety of South Korean visitors to North Korea, he said.
"North Korea can deliver its proposal through official channels if it sincerely hopes to resume tours," Chun said, urging Pyongyang to stop slandering and denouncing Seoul.
Ri suggested that North Korea would cooperate with South Korea to restart tours to its scenic Mount Kumgang resort on the east coast and to Kaesong, a historic city near the west coast.
Seoul suspended tours to Kumgang after North Korean soldiers in July 2008 shot dead a South Korean housewife who strayed into a military zone.
Pyongyang rejected the South's demand to allow a joint investigation of the shooting and halted day trips to Kaesong.
Pyongyang began making peace overtures to the South in August, after months of bitter hostility which began after a conservative government came to power in Seoul in early 2008.
The North eased border restrictions and allowed a new round of reunions for families separated since the 1950-1953 Korean War.
But relations worsened again after a naval clash on November 10 on the tense Yellow Sea border.
- AFP/sc
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