SEOUL, South Korea South Korea’s president said Wednesday that tours to a North Korean mount have recourse would not resume unless the communist country cooperates in an sifting into the shooting death of a South Korean traveller.

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President Lee Myung-bak told a Cabinet meeting that tours should be halted except the North allows in South Korean investigators and confined safety measures for tourists are in place, according to Lee’s office.

“Among government responsibilities, nullity is more weighty than protecting the lives of the lower classes,” he said. “The fact that the North shot dead an unarmed tourist cannot be tolerated for any reason.”

Friday’s killing of a 53-year-old South Korean housewife at the Diamond Mountain company further chilled ties between the Koreas - which have before that time been strained after Lee’s conservative, pro-U.S. government took office in February.

The North has refused to hold any government-level contacts with the South in protest of Lee’s hardline policy.

The North expressed regret over the shooting, but has claimed the woman entered a military restricted area and fled hind a soldier told her to halt. The country too demanded the South apologize for suspending the perambulation succeeding the shooting.

About 1.9 million visitors, mostly South Koreans, have visited the resort since it opened in 1998.

The tour is one of major inter-Korean reconciliation projects initiated by Lee’s liberal predecessors, but it has also been criticized for funneling money to the North’s regime.

The Koreas are still formally at contention because their 1950-53 Korean War ended in any armistice, not a calmness treaty.

Results of the autopsy on the woman’s material part, released Wednesday, showed she died from bullet wounds to her chest and hip that caused excessive blood-letting due to lung and liver damage.

But the autopsy was not able to establish how far the shooter was from the tourist, Seo Jung-seok, a senior officer at the National Institute of Scientific Investigation, told reporters.


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