BEIJING — With surprising speed, the rapprochement between the Koreas has unraveled over the last month since the shooting of a South Korean tourist at a North Korea resort.
The North on Sunday started expelling South Korean workers from the resort at Mt. Kumgang, which for close to a decade has been a symbol of Korean reconciliation efforts.
Squabbling between the Koreas also forced organizers of the Beijing Olympics to rearrange the opening ceremony Friday to keep the two nations' delegations apart. It was the first time since 1996 that the Koreans had marched separately at the Games' opening ceremony and a sign of just how much the relationship has deteriorated.
The strains have been building since July 11, when a 53-year-old South Korean homemaker was shot to death, apparently while taking a sunrise walk on a beach.
Although there was little dispute that a North Korean soldier fired the fatal shots, the North lashed out at South Korea. The communist regime said the tourist, Park Wang-ja, had strayed into a military zone, and it refused the South's request for an inquiry. The South has suspended tours to the resort.
Since 1998, almost 2 million South Koreans have visited Mt. Kumgang, which is on the east coast of the peninsula just north of the demilitarized zone. The resort, which has hiking trails, a golf course, a spa and a beach, also has been used for reunions of Korean families divided between the two countries. It is a major source of hard currency for impoverished North Korea.
Although the site is now closed, about 150 South Koreans are still there, most of them staffers of Hyundai Asan, the company that runs the resort. South Korea said the first four left Sunday and 10 more would leave today.
North Korea said it was taking a "principled stand . . . regarding the error committed by a tourist of the south side."
With rhetoric reminiscent of the worst periods of tension on the Korean peninsula, the North lashed out at South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who took office in February, calling him a "puppet" and "traitor" who would "bring inter-Korean relations to catastrophe."
South Korean analysts said that the spat had less to do with the shooting incident than with North Korean anxieties about Lee, who met last week with President Bush.
