LEAD) Hyundai chief extends N. Korea trip for third time

(ATTN: UPDATES lead, throughout with Hyundai Asan chief remarks, Seoul official's
quote, no meeting yet with N.K. leader)
By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, Aug. 14 (Yonhap) -- The chairwoman of South Korea's Hyundai Group extended
her North Korea trip for a third time on Friday, as uncertainty remained over
whether the country's leader Kim Jong-il would grant a meeting with her.

Hyun Jung-eun, initially due to return home in the afternoon, will stay in North
Korea for one more day, said Cho Kun-shik, chief of the group's North Korea
business unit, Hyundai Asan Corp., who received a phone call from her entourage
in Pyongyang.
Hyun "seems to have been granted no meeting yet with Chairman Kim Jong-il," Cho
said before departing for North Korea at the Inter-Korean Transit Office in the
South Korean border town of Paju. Cho routinely visits a joint park in the
North's border town of Kaesong, which was developed by Hyundai Asan.
The Unification Ministry will again approve the extension, said spokesman Chun
Hae-sung.
Chun also said the Hyundai chief has met with Kim Yang-gon, a prominent
department director of the Workers' Party who has spearheaded past inter-Korean
exchanges. When the two met and what they discussed were not immediately known.
Hyun was still in Pyongyang, the ministry spokesman said. Kim appeared to be on
provincial inspection tours that were reported by North Korean media on Thursday.
"Whether the meeting will take place is still uncertain," the ministry spokesman
said.
In a fence-mending move, North Korea on Thursday freed Yu Seong-jin, a Hyundai
Asan worker who was detained in late March on accusations of criticizing the
North's political system.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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