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SOUTH KOREA: UNIFICATION MINISTER VISITS NORTH December 5, 2006
Zainab Osman
(SomaliNet) South Korea's unification minister has begun a visit to North Korea, becoming the highest-ranking Seoul official to visit the communist state since its October nuclear test. Minister Lee Jong-Seok will stay in Mount Kumgang, a South Korea-funded tourist resort north of the Korean border, for two days, Lee's office said in a statement.
The sensitive trip came amid criticism that the joint-venture tourism project could help finance North Korea's weaponry. Pyongyang has been under UN sanctions for its defiant October 9 nuclear test.
Critics have demanded South Korea drop the project in protest, but Seoul decided to halt government subsidies while maintaining the project, a symbol of inter-Korean rapprochement, since its launch in 1998. "Minister Lee is scheduled to meet with and encourage South Korean businessmen and workers at the mountain resort," ministry spokesman Kang Jong-Suk said after Lee's departure for the North.
The Seoul government, under a "sunshine" policy of engagement with the North, sees the tour business, together with the Kaesong industrial estate which it also funds, as the key icon of rapprochement. It insists it should keep Mount Kumgang and Kaesong going despite inter-Korean tensions. The two projects have raised 950 million dollars for the North since 1998.
The two Koreas have taken a series of peace initiatives since their leaders held a summit in 2000. But they still remain technically at war since the 1950-1953 Korean conflict.