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SEOUL: A cargo train once seen as a symbol of inter-Korean reconciliation made its last trip north across the border Friday before North Korea shuts the service amid worsening ties with the South.
South Korean day-trippers also took their last look at the North after the communist state announced it is banning coach tours from Monday.
Pyongyang has furthermore halved the number of South Korean workers permitted to travel to the Seoul-funded Kaesong industrial estate north of the border, Seoul's unification ministry said.
North Korea says the strict frontier curbs will go into force next Monday. It calls them "the first step" in response to worsening relations with Seoul's conservative government.
"My heart is bleeding as the cross-border railway service is being cut off again like this," said Shin Jang-Chul before he drove the train towards the heavily fortified frontier.
"But I think this situation is only transitory," said Shin, who also drove the train when the service resumed in May 2007 for the first time in 56 years.
Regular services began last December, on a 7.3-kilometre (4.6-mile) section of track.
The cargo train operates one trip in each direction from Mondays to Fridays. It has often been run almost empty because of a lack of demand but South Korea has kept it going because of its symbolic value.
The North has announced the curbs because of what it calls Seoul's policy of confrontation, including President Lee Myung-Bak's failure to honour summit pacts reached with his liberal predecessors.
It says South Koreans working at two joint projects - the Mount Kumgang east coast resort and the Kaesong industrial estate - will be "selectively" expelled.
The unification ministry said the North had halved the number of South Korean workers permitted to travel to or stay in the estate to some 2,000.
Some 35,000 North Koreans earning about US$70 a month work for 88 South Korean firms at Kaesong, producing items such as watches, cheap clothes and shoes and kitchenware.
The North has indicated it does not want to shut down the estate but analysts believe a closure is on the cards if relations worsen further.
The last group of 210 South Korean tourists left Friday on the day trip to Kaesong, a historic city near the industrial estate, tour operator Hyundai Asan said.
"My heart aches as we'll be the last to see Kaesong. I hope inter-Korean relations will improve so that we'll be able to come there again," Choi Heung-Dae, 55, told journalists.
Bus driver Ahn Kon-kuk, 60, has been making three or four trips a week to Kaesong since tours to the ancient capital began in December last year.
More than 111,000 people have taken the tour since then.
"I take pride in my work, as I believe I am contributing to inter-Korean exchanges and reconciliation. Now, I feel quite sad," Ahn said.
A decade-old tour programme to Mount Kumgang was suspended in July after North Korean soldiers shot dead a Seoul housewife who strayed into a restricted military zone.
The joint projects and tours began during a decade-long "sunshine" engagement policy promoted by liberal presidents, which saw Seoul spend billions of dollars in the impoverished North.
Critics claimed the South got little in return, with the North even staging a nuclear test in 2006.
Conservative President Lee, who took office in February, changed tack and linked major economic aid to progress in denuclearisation, reform and openness in the North, enraging Pyongyang.
- AFP/yb
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