Tough times for Hyundai Asan following shooting in N. Korea

SEOUL, Nov. 10 (Yonhap) -- Financial woes are mounting for Hyundai Asan Corp., which operates tours to North Korea, four months after the shooting death of a South Korean tourist at a mountain resort in the North, company officials said Monday.

Tours to Mt. Geumgang, just north of the border separating the two countries,
were halted on July 11 when Park Wang-ja, a 53-year-old housewife from Seoul, was
shot and killed by a North Korean soldier when she strayed into a military zone
near the resort site.
The incident further chilled inter-Korean relations, already at a low following
the inauguration in February of the South's conservative President Lee Myung-bak,
who immediately adopted a get-tough policy on the North.
The North Korean tour program, which first began in 1998, accounts for nearly 60
percent of all revenues for Hyundai Asan, a unit of the South's Hyundai Group.
Hit by the indefinite suspension of the tour program, Hyundai Asan expects to
report its first operating loss in three years this year.
Revenues are likely to fall to as low as 220 billion won (US$165 million), from
about 300 billion won last year, company officials say.
To trim costs, Hyundai Asan plans to ask that some employees work from home for
70 percent of their original wages by the end of this year.
An official at Hyundai Asan said the company hopes to resume the tour program soon.
"Everything is lined up with the hope that the tours to Mt. Geumgang will resume
by at least next year," the official said.
Since its launch in 1998 by then President Kim Dae-jung as part of his policy of
reconciliation with the North, more than 1.5 million South Koreans have visited
the North's mountain resort site.
South and North Korea are still technically at war because the 1950-53 Korean War
ended with a truce, not a peace treaty.
(END)