国际英语新闻：DPRK to expel all but 16 S Koreans at Kumgang resort

SEOUL, April 30 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) said Friday it will expel all but 16 South Koreans working at a mountain resort, one of the destinations of suspended cross-border tours, South Korea's Unification Ministry said.

A DPRK official told Hyundai Asan Corp, an operator of tours to the scenic Kumgang mountain, that all South Korean personnel there except 16 people should leave the region by 10 a.m. local time on May 3, it said.

Allowing 16 people is to maintain the communications channel, according to local media.

The move is the latest in a series of recent steps taken by the DPRK in protest of what it sees as South Korea's reluctance to reopen lucrative cross-border tours, once a rare source of hard cash for the country.

Pyongyang has frozen South Korean properties worth 359.3 billion won (325.5 million U.S. dollars) at the resort, despite Seoul's criticism that such unilateral steps violate inter-Korean business agreements and international customs.

Confiscated facilities include a Seoul-run reunion center for separated families in the two Koreas, a duty free shop, a hot spring, a culture center and a fire station. Tours to Kumgang, which had brought nearly 2 million South Koreans to the scenic mountain since the tour project was launched in 1998, were indefinitely suspended after a South Korean tourist was shot dead by a DPRK soldier in 2008.