North Korea has reportedly asked Lotte Tours to pay a commission to operate a pilot tour project for its border city of Gaesong that would exclude the Hyundai Asan Corporation, the previously designated operator of the project.

A member of the Commission for Unification, Foreign Affairs and Trade at the National Assembly included the comment Monday in a report published ahead of the parliamentary inspection of the Unification Ministry.

The report said the North had requested a two-hundred-dollar commission per tourist in its offering of the tour project to Lotte, even though Hyundai had already conducted trial tours in preparation for its own formal launch of a Gaesong sight-seeing program.

Pyongyang officials reportedly said many preparatory works are required for a tour program around its border town of Gaesong, which it claims has grown in value throughout its one-thousand-year-long history.

The lawmaker proposed a hearing on discussion of future directions of tour projects in connection with suspicions surrounding ex-Hyundai executive Kim Yoon-kyu, who recently stepped down over his alleged embezzlement of the inter-Korean cooperation fund.