Seoul cannot resume tours to the Mt. Kumgang resort in North Korea unless the North agrees on a joint probe into the fatal shooting of a South Korean tourist there, promises to take measures to prevent the recurrence of similar incidents, and guarantees safe passage of tourists, President Lee Myung-bak said Wednesday. Presidential spokesman Lee Dong-kwan quoted the president as making the remarks after the North rebuffed all South Korean attempts to investigate Friday’s fatal shooting of Park Wang-ja (53) at the mountain resort.
In a Cabinet meeting at Cheong Wa Dae that day, Lee said, "Over the past decade, both the government and citizens” of South Korea “have given an enormous amount of aid to the North. Many of our people have visited the Mt. Kumgang resort area with good intentions with a view to helping the North. But North Korea shot a defenseless tourist dead. This is unpardonable under any circumstances."
He urged the North to “immediately agree on a joint probe to find out the truth. From the standpoint of international norms and common sense, it is quite natural North Korea should comply with our request."
Meanwhile, Lee in the same meeting commented on Japan's latest decision to state its claim to Korea’s Dokdo islets in new teaching guidelines for middle school textbooks. "We should note that Japan has been taking one step at a time with the purpose of turning Dokdo into a disputed area from a long-term strategic viewpoint. Considering this, we should also deal with it from a long-term strategic viewpoint, not from a short-sighted and temporary one."
He called for “long-term research and work out long-sighted responses to Chinese and Japanese" moves to distort history "by stepping up the activities of the Northeast Asian History Foundation. We also need to consider ways to work jointly with China and Japan to publish a history textbook on Northeast Asia."
The Northeast Asian History Foundation is an agency founded by the Roh Moo-hyun administration to counter Japanese claim to Dokdo. "We should step up international publicity activities, as well as consolidating our effective dominion over Dokdo, to take concrete and aggressive steps to thwart Japan's attempt to distort history."
