By Lee Jin-joo and Jon Herskovitz
SEOUL (Reuters) - Hundreds of South Korean tourists vacateda mountain resort in the North on Saturday, a day after a NorthKorean soldier shot and killed a 53-year-old woman vacationerwho wandered into a military zone in the area.
The incident comes as ties between the states, technicallystill at war, chilled in recent months and South Korea's newpresident, who has advocated taking a tough line withPyongyang, repeated calls for dialogue.
After the shooting on Friday, South Korea suspended tourismto the Mount Kumgang resort, located a few kilometres north ofthe heavily fortified border on the east coast.
The South Korean affiliate of the Hyundai Group that runsthe resort has been shuttling tourists back to the South sinceFriday.
"There were 1,362 tourists in Mount Kumkang and we expect1,012 of them to return to the South today," said an officialwith resort operator Hyundai Asan.
Medical authorities said the victim, Park Wang-ja, was shotonce in the chest and once in her buttocks.
Park, the wife of a retired policeman, had left her hotelto watch the sunrise over the sea, fellow travellers told localmedia.
She had apparently strayed past fenced-off resort groundsand was shot by a North Korean sentry in the pre-dawn hours ofFriday when she entered the military zone, South Koreangovernment officials said.
South Korea is conducting an investigation and looking intoNorth Korean claims that a sentry shouted at Park to halt, andfired a warning shot before shooting the housewife.
A South Korean Unification Ministry official said NorthKorea has shown little interest in cooperating in theinvestigation.
GENTLE AND KIND
"Park was very gentle and kind," Chae Young-soon, aneighbour told local reporters.
The North Korean resort, opened in 1998, has been visitedby almost two million South Koreans. Park is the first SouthKorean tourist killed by a North Korean, a government officialsaid.
The resort has hotels, stores, a golf course and a spastaffed by North Koreans. There is also a heavy North Koreanmilitary presence in the area, which has been a key naval zonefor the reclusive state.
The resort has supplied hundreds of millions of dollars toimpoverished North Korea with tourists paying a fee to enterthe country and the communist state taking a cut on food,lodging and recreation expenses paid by tourists.
Before the incident was made public on Friday, PresidentLee Myung-bak, who took office in February, repeated a call tothe North to return to inter-Korean discussions.
Pyongyang has called Lee "a traitor to the nation" forcutting off what had been a free flow of aid and seeking to tieSeoul's largesse to progress the North makes in disarmament.
In April, North Korea said it was cutting off dialogue withits wealthy neighbour, despite Lee's calls to tone down heatedrhetoric and get back to serious talks.
(Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Valerie Lee)
