South Korea asked North Korea on Monday to stop organizing sightseeing tours for foreigners visiting a scenic mountain resort in the communist country while shutting it out to South Koreans.

Cross-border tours for South Koreans to Mount Geumgang on the North’s east coast remain suspended since a South Korean woman tourist was shot to death by a North Korean soldier there in July 2008.

Seoul has required a tourist safety guarantee from the North as a condition for resuming the tour program, once a cash cow project for cash-strapped North Korea, but the North has not responded

Amid a prolonged stalemate in efforts to reopen the tour across the inter-Korean border, North Korea last summer opened the resort to foreigners and allowed them to use hotels and other facilities built by South Korea.

Marking the 14th anniversary of the start of the Geumgang tourism program, Seoul’s Unification Ministry said that Pyongyang’s failure to give a safety guarantee for tourists is the major hurdle to the reopening of the program, now suspended for more than four years.

“In order for the tour program to reopen, we urge more sincere measures from the North, including inter-governmental talks,” ministry spokesman Kim Hyung-suk said in a briefing.

According to Seoul-based Hyundai Asan, North Korea is active in luring in foreign tourists to the resort, which was developed and exclusively run by it.

Calling the North’s use of the Hyundai Asan resort facilities illegal, the Unification Ministry called for the North’s sincere action to resume the suspended program with the South.

Pyongyang has violated Hyundai Asan’s exclusive rights to run the program, Kim said, referring to the North’s unfair use of the resort facilities in drawing in foreign, mostly Chinese, tourists to the region. The North should suspend its tour business there, he said.

“The (South) government demands the North recover the South firm’s property rights,” Kim said, indicating the North’s current tour business, adopted in place of Hyundai Asan’s suspended program, is in breach of South-North investment agreements.

Hyundai Asan launched the Geumgang tour program on Nov. 18, 1998 as both Koreas widened exchanges under the then President Kim Dae-jung’s engagement policy line toward North Korea.

The inter-Korean tour project, however, came to a sudden halt in July 2008 and remains suspended following the shooting death of the tourist.

Seoul has since refused to allow the resumption of the program, citing the lack of guarantee from the North to protect the safety of South Korean tourists.

Amid the suspension, the North has frozen the South Korean firm’s exclusive rights to run tour programs at Geumgang and lured foreign tourists into the resort area through other routes.

Also on Monday, officials of Hyundai Asan crossed the land border Monday morning to visit the resort area to mark the 14th anniversary of the opening of the joint inter-Korean cooperation project.

A bus and a sedan carrying the 19-men delegation led by Hyundai Asan President Kim Jong-hag departed from the east-coast transit office and crossed the heavily fortified Military Demarcation Line at 9:40 a.m.

Wrapping up his visit to the resort, Kim told reporters that both sides agreed to make arrangements for the resumption of the Geumgang tour, if chances are offered in the future.

During his visit, a ceremony to mark the 14th anniversary of the opening of the Geumgang tour program was held with five North Korean officials in participation, Kim said.

Kim also said that South Korean-built hotels and other facilities including a hot spring have been kept in a good shape than expected. (Yonhap News)