Anchor: The government says North Korea has rejected South Korea's call for in-person talks over South Korean tourist facilities at the Mount Geumgang resort. Seoul just a day earlier proposed talks after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un instructed his officials to remove South Korean facilities left behind at the North Korean mountain resort.
Kim Bum-soo has more. 

Report: Pyongyang has refused Seoul's offer to hold working-level talks over the fate of South Korean facilities in the Mount Geumgang resort in the North.

The South Korean Unification Ministry on Tuesday announced that it received a reply from the North, which argued that there is no need to hold an in-person meeting on the matter. 

The ministry explained that Pyongyang insisted on discussing the issue by exchanging documents rather than holding in-person talks. 

Seoul on Monday proposed talks with Pyongyang after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un instructed his officials to remove all South Korean facilities at the Mount Geumgang resort.  

Shortly after Kim's remarks were released last week, the South received a message from the North, which called for written communication to settle the issue. 

Located at scenic Mount Geumgang on North Korea's eastern coast, the resort was once a popular tourist destination for South Koreans until 2008.

The sole inter-Korean tour program, run by South Korea’s Hyundai Asan corporation, has been suspended since 2008, when a tourist from the South was fatally shot after entering an off-limits military area adjacent to the resort.

North Korea had been hopeful about resuming the suspended tours to Geumgang after last year's inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang, during which the two sides agreed to restart suspended inter-Korean projects as soon as conditions are met.

In his New Year's speech, Kim again made it apparent that he was willing to resume the tourism project along with the Gaeseong Industrial Complex.  

However, with the Washington-Pyongyang nuclear talks hitting an impasse, Pyongyang turned critical of Seoul for failing to secure relief from Washington-led international sanctions, which has prevented inter-Korean and other projects from rekindling the North Korean economy.

While reporting about the North Korean leader's instruction regarding the Geumgang resort, North Korean media cited him as saying that it is wrong to identify Mount Geumgang as a symbol of inter-Korean cooperation or as common property of the two Koreas.

After Hyundai Asan’s tour program began in 1998, a total of around two million South Koreans visited the area, paying 50 dollars per person to the North Korean authorities.  

As previous South Korean administrations were adamantly against restarting the tour program, North Korea in 2010 announced that it was freezing and confiscating related South Korean assets. After canceling Hyundai Asan's operational license in 2011, the North in 2013 launched its own foreign tourism program at the resort.

South Korean officials say they are working to determine North Korea's intentions behind the Geumgang instructions. 
Kim Bum-soo, KBS World Radio News.

[Photo : YONHAP News]