SEOUL - SOUTH Korean tourists on Monday crossed the heavily fortified inter-Korean border in their own cars for the first time in more than five decades, tour organisers said.

A convoy of 15 cars and sports utility vehicles (SUVs) reached the scenic Mount Kumgang resort on North Korea's east coast, said Hyundai Asan, the Seoul company which runs the tours.

It was the first time that South Korean tourists have crossed the border using their own cars since the 1950-1953 war sealed the division of the peninsula into communist North and capitalist South.

Hyundai Asan launched its landmark tours to Mount Kumgang in 1998 using ships at the beginning and later buses to ferry South Koreans across the border.

More than 1.8 million visitors, mostly Koreans, have travelled there since then.

The new tour programme is part of efforts to boost demand, a Hyundai Asan spokeswoman said.

'It has a great significance in that South Koreans can now drive their own cars up to North Korea,' she told reporters.

North Korea is allowing up to 20 South Korean privately owned vehicles to cross the border daily and travel at a maximum speed of 50 kilometres per hour to the mountain resort, she said.

No driving around resort
But motorists are banned from driving around the resort.

Instead they must park their cars and join the group tour buses. The cost of the three-day tour using private cars is 340,000 won (S$455) per person.

Last December North Korea opened a second destination to South Korean visitors, the historic city of Kaesong.

It was the first time the sensitive border city had been opened to cross-border tourists since the end of the war in 1953.

Hyundai Asan also operates a joint industrial estate at Kaesong, with North Korean workers earning around 60 dollars a month producing light industrial goods in South Korean-owned factories.

Some factory managers are allowed to drive across the border to Kaesong.

At a historic summit last October, the leaders of the two Koreas agreed to open the North's highest peak, Mount Paekdu on the Chinese border, to South Korean tourists from this May.

Hyundai Asan has said it hopes in future to add the North's capital Pyongyang to the itinerary of this tour.

Despite recent rapprochement, the two Koreas maintain strict controls along the world's last Cold War frontier, which is fortified with minefields and tank traps.

The two nations are still technically at war since their conflict ended in an armistice and not a peace treaty. South Koreans are legally banned by their government from making unauthorised trips to the North. -- AFP