PYONGYANG, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has urged South Korea to drop preconditions for the resumption of cross-border tours, the official KCNA news agency reported Monday.
South Korea and the DPRK on Monday held talks on the resumption of cross-border tours but failed to narrow differences, including measures to ensure security for South Korean tourists, South Korea's Ministry of Unification said.
The KCNA report said South Korea continued to talk about three conditions in Monday's talks and refused to fix the date for the next contact.
During the talks, the south side reiterated its position that the two sides, before reopening tours, need to draw up measures to ensure safety of its tourists.
Seoul also called on Pyongyang to allow a thorough investigation into a shooting incident that killed a South Korean tourist in 2008 and set up measures to prevent recurrences of such incidents.
Seoul previously said the DPRK's acceptance of its demands would not automatically lead to the resumption of the tours.
The KCNA report said there were no reasons to hinder the resumption of the tours as the DPRK already "clarified the truth behind the incident" and "firmly guaranteed at a high level the non-recurrence of similar incident and the safety of south side's tourists."
Tours to a resort at Mount Kumgang was halted in 2008 soon after the shooting incident, and tours to the border town of Kaesong near the west coast was also suspended.
After about 19 months of suspension and in what many in Seoul saw as a peace gesture, the DPRK last month proposed to hold talks on reopening the tours.
The DPRK proposed to resume tours to Kaesong area on March 1 and tours to Mount Kumgang on April 1.
