North Korea to halt cross-border contacts with South

KAESONG, North Korea - For months, tours of this historic city famed for its Buddhist temples and ancient relics have given South Koreans a glimpse of life in the hidden communist North.

But North Korean officials said yesterday these visits were being suspended starting Dec. 1, along with other cross-border contacts, because of tensions with Seoul.

North Korea said it will expel some South Koreans from a joint industrial zone in Kaesong but stopped short of closing the South Korean-run factories that were a symbol of economic cooperation and the key source of hard currency for the impoverished North.

North Korea also said it will halt the daily train service between Kaesong and Seoul, the South Korean capital.

Though restrictive, the bus tours to Kaesong have been immensely popular among South Koreans since they began a year ago, with more than 110,000 tourists taking the daylong visit to a city just 40 miles from Seoul but inaccessible for nearly 60 years.

North Korea's pending suspension of the tours has heightened fears that 10 years of progress in improving ties between the wartime rivals might be in danger of unraveling.

For many South Koreans who took the bus tour, it was their first trip to North Korea, a country that is run with absolute authority by the autocratic Kim Jong Il.

The visitors were never truly welcomed there, as Saturday's excursion showed. During that trip, cellphones, laptops, and cameras with telephoto lenses were locked away before the tour bus left South Korea.

Travelers were warned not to speak to ordinary North Koreans, not to criticize the government, and not to ask about the health of Kim.

"Don't bring back red items or any of that North Korean propaganda - I know foreigners love to buy propaganda," a South Korean tour guide said.

The moment the bus passed into North Korea, tourists applauded. At the border, North Korea's de facto theme song for reconciliation - "Nice to Meet You" - played over and over on a loudspeaker as travelers endured yet another security check.

As the bus ambled into Kaesong with two new North Korean guides aboard, soldiers stood guard at intervals along the route, a lone figure in a brown field or on an empty dirt road, red flag at the ready to wave at an errant tourist snapping a photo from the bus window.

If the flag had been raised, the convoy would have been stopped and the photographer would have been ordered to delete the image.

The North Korean tour guide, a Kaesong native, was witty and warm as he told tourists about the history of the capital known as Songdo, "the City of Pine Trees," at one point serenading them with Korea's most famous folk song, "Arirang" and teasing them with jokes - a scene perhaps unthinkable a decade ago.

He also displayed a keen interest in President-elect Barack Obama, inquiring about the Democrat's stance on US-North Korea relations.

"I see no reason why the two countries should be so far apart if the US policy changes," he said. "It would be better if the two countries were friendly in the future."

Kaesong, Korea's cultural and religious centerpiece before power shifted to Seoul in the 14th century, has a rich heritage and military history. During the three-year Korean War, control of Kaesong - in the heart of the peninsula - was traded back and forth as the front shifted. When fighting stopped in 1953, Kaesong fell just north of the border.

The Kaesong tour included the famed Bakyeon waterfall, a Buddhist temple dating back the 11th century, and a stone bridge where a bloody murder led to the fall of Koryo Dynasty in 1392.

Nearly 2 million tourists flocked to Diamond Mountain before a North Korean soldier shot a tourist in July, halting the tours amid a stalemate over the investigation.