Korea — Bridging the divide

MOUNT KUMGANG, North Korea — There is nothing in the peaceful splendor of Mount Kumgang to suggest it is part of a country that President Bush called an axis of evil.

Angular rocks jut heavenward, forming craggy spines on its granite peaks. Legend has it that animals that once roamed the forest turned to stone because it was too beautiful to leave. Crystal-clear streams spill into emerald pools and cascade over sheer cliffs.

Hikers — mostly middle-aged South Korean couples wearing colorful sweat suits and hiking boots — traverse pine- and maple-lined trails looking for the spiritual renewal Kumgang is said to offer. Some sip from a cool spring touted as a fountain of youth.

Mount Kumgang (Diamond) sits about equidistant from Pyongyang and Seoul, the capitals of North Korea and South Korea, respectively. But it is far removed from the often tense political push-pull of two nations technically still at war.

It is one of two main North-South cooperative projects, initiated not by the countries' communist and democratic governments but by private enterprise. It also is a place where Westerners can travel into the closed country without too much trouble.

Hyundai Asan, an arm of South Korean shipbuilding and car-making giant Hyundai, paid the North Korean government $1 billion for exclusive rights to develop a Western-style resort at the base of the mountain. (The payment also included the right to build a manufacturing complex on the other side of the country, where South Korean companies employ North Korean workers.)

"We started our business for inter-Korean cooperation and peace in the Korean peninsula," said Byun Ha Jung, Hyundai Asan general manager for planning and foreign investor relations.

Since 1998, the company has pumped more than $400 million into the resort, which currently includes three hotels, two condominium villages, four North Korean and six South Korean restaurants, two souvenir shops and a performing arts center featuring North Korean acrobats. An 18-hole golf course is set to open in the fall.

A peculiar capitalism is alive and well here. U.S. dollars are the preferred currency.

A two-night, three-day stay runs about $400, of which $80 goes to the North Korean government. To date, the company has paid out $114 million based on its overnight packages.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill has said the resort exists to funnel money to the communist regime, which tested a nuclear bomb last October. But Byun said Hyundai Asan is confident the money has gone to help revitalize the collapsed North Korean economy.