SEOUL, KOREA - A FUNERAL was held on Tuesday for the South Korean woman shot dead by a North Korean soldier while vacationing in the communist country, as Seoul pressed its neighbour for information about the killing.

South Korea's government, which extended an olive branch just after the killing took place last Friday by asking the North to return to frozen dialogue, has been angered by Pyongyang's refusal to cooperate and insistence that Seoul apologise.

Mourners gathered at a Seoul funeral hall to pay their respects to the victim Park Wang Ja, 53. Her husband, a retired police officer, broke down in tears as her coffin was carried away. South Korea's president sent a memorial bouquet of flowers.

Mrs Park was shot in the chest and the buttocks when she apparently went to watch the sun rise last Friday and wandered into a North Korean military zone near the Mount Kumgang resort, located on the east coast and just north of the heavily armed border.

A South Korean Unification Ministry official said on Tuesday the government was trying to contact North Korea via communication links in the Panmunjom truce village located in the Demilitarised Zone that has divided the peninsula since the end of the 1950-1953 Korean War.

'We have continuously been trying to restore this dialogue channel but the North has not responded', said Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Ho Nyeon.

Shortly after the shooting, South Korea suspended tours to Kumgang, which has been visited by nearly 2 million South Koreans since it opened in 1998 and has provided the cash-starved North with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

South Korean President Lee Myung Bak, who has pledged to take a tough line with Pyongyang, last Friday called for talks with the reclusive North on cooperation projects.

Mr Lee has ended the free flow of aid North Korea had seen under his predecessors and said Seoul's handouts would be tied to progress the North makes in six-country talks on ending its nuclear weapons programme.

The North, angered by this change in policy, attacked Mr Lee.

It called his request for talks 'an intolerable insult'.

Analysts said the shooting has caused many in South Korea to wonder if Mr Lee, who has seen his support rate plummet due to policy blunders, has taken the right course with North Korea.

They also said South Koreans were re-thinking the last few years of relative calm with their neighbour along the Cold War's last frontier.

'This shooting incident is going to have greater implications than people think', said Mr Lee Dong Bok, a senior associate in Seoul with the CSIS think tank.

'The people of South Korea are beginning to worry about their own security and safety as they allow themselves to be subjected to projects like (Kumgang)', Mr Lee said. -- REUTERS

Photo: Bang Jae-Jeong (centre), son of Park Wang-Ja, who was killed at Mount Kumgang resort in North Korea, weeps while his father Bang Young-Min (right) looks on during a funeral ceremony at Asan Hospital in Seoul on July 15, 2008.