North Korea rejects meeting with South over resort

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — rth Korea on Tuesday rejected South Korea’s request for working-level talks to discuss possible demolition of South Korean-me hotels and or facilities at rth’s Diamond Mountain resort that rth Korean leer Kim Jong Un wants removed. In letters dressed to Seoul’s Unification Ministry and South Korea’s Hyundai business group, rth Korea said face-to-face meetings would be unnecessary and repeated its stance that details should be worked out through document exchanges, ministry said.

South on Monday proposed a working-level meeting with rth Korea, days after rth formally demanded that South Koreans come to Diamond Mountain at an agreed-upon date to clear out ir facilities. During a visit to site last week, Kim ordered destruction of South Korean-built facilities he described as “shabby” and “unpleasant looking,” apparently because Seoul won’t defy U.S.-led international sanctions and resume South Korean tours at site. rth later proposed an exchange of documents to work out details.

Unification Ministry didn’t immediately say wher it would make furr demands for meetings with rth. South Korea’s government has said it will seek “creative solutions” to problem based on political considerations and inter-Korean discussions. It’s unclear wher South Korea will agree to destroy any of its facilities or seek ways to partially resume tours amid sanctions to defuse rth’s anger.

Tours to Diamond Mountain were a major symbol of cooperation between Koreas and a valuable cash source for rth’s broken ecomy before South suspended m in 2008 after a rth Korean guard fatally shot a South Korean tourist. Seoul can’t restart mass tours to Diamond Mountain or any or major inter-Korean ecomic activity without defying U.S.-led international sanctions against rth Korea, which have been strengned since 2016, when rth began accelerating its nuclear and missile tests. While U.N. sanctions don’t directly ban tourism, y prohibit bulk cash transfers that can result from business activities like Diamond Mountain tours.

Kim’s order to tear down South Korean properties at Diamond Mountain comes during a prolonged freeze in relations with South Korea and deals a major setback to liberal South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who met Kim three times last year while expressing ambitions to reboot inter-Korean ecomic engment when possible. prospects for that have dimmed amid delocked nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang, which have faltered since collapse of a February summit between Kim and President Donald Trump in Vietnam, where Americans rejected rth’s demands for bro sanctions relief in exchange for a partial surrender of its nuclear capabilities.

In a speech in Azerbaijan, Choe Ryong Hae, considered second-most powerful official in rth Korea, blamed South Korea’s “reliance on foreign forces” for setbacks in inter-Korean relations, echoing earlier calls by Pyongyang for Seoul to break away from Washington and restart ecomic engment between Koreas. Choe also said standstill in nuclear negotiations has put Korean Peninsula at a crossros between peace and a “touch-and-go crisis” and demanded that Trump ministration remove its “hostile” policy of sanctions and pressure on rth, rth’s official Korean Central News ncy said Tuesday.