A total of 9,866 people from South Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) crossed the sealed inter-Korean border to visit the other side in the first half of 2004, up 74 percent over the same period of last year, according to South Korean Unification Ministry on Monday.

The number of South Koreans who visited the DPRK during the six-month period totaled 9,545, said the ministry.

But, the number does not include 82,444 South Koreans who visited Mount Geumgang, a DPRK mountain resort on the east coast, which has been open to South Korean visitors since 1998, it noted.

In the mean time, the number of DPRK who traveled to the South Korea came to 321.

Inter-Korean exchanges have expanded significantly since the inter-Korean summit in 2000, but people of the two sides still can not visit each other freely.

Source: Xinhua