Japan’s Tottori Prefecture is urging South Korean tourists to devise thorough safety measures before climbing Mount Daisen.
 
Japan’s Kyodo News said Monday that the Tottori Prefecture sent letters to South Korean travel agencies earlier this year, asking them to make sure they encourage their customers to make appropriate preparations before climbing the one-thousand-729 meter mountain.
 
In the letters, the prefecture is said to have urged South Korean tourists to present a climbing plan in advance, arrange a mountain guide and equip themselves appropriately.
 
The move comes as the prefecture is aiming to double the number of its foreign tourists by 2020, with South Koreans accounting for the largest number of visitors to Japan last year.
 
The prefectural government first sent letters to the travel agencies after four South Korean climbers died in July last year on a mountain trail connecting Mount Hinokio and Mount Hoken in Nagano Prefecture. The four, who were part of a group of 20 South Korean climbers, went up the mountain trail without a guide.