Hyundai chief due home amid no sign of meeting with N. Korean leader

SEOUL, Aug. 15 (Yonhap) -- The chairwoman of South Korea's Hyundai Group was due
to return from North Korea on Saturday amid no sign that she met with the
country's leader Kim Jong-il despite extending her stay three times.

Hyun Jung-eun traveled to Pyongyang Monday on what was initially a three-day
mission to win the release of an employee who had been detained since March on
charges of criticizing the North's political system. The Hyundai worker, Yu
Seong-jin, was freed and returned home Thursday.
But the North Korean leader proved elusive this week, with state media reporting
that he was conducting provincial tours. Hyun has extended her trip every day
since Wednesday, apparently waiting for a meeting with him.
"We received no phone call (from Hyun's entourage) this morning. The last message
we got yesterday was they will return today," Kim Ha-young, a spokesman with
Hyundai Asan Corp., the group's North Korea business unit, said.
But there is still a possibility Hyun will again extend her trip later in the
afternoon, he said.
In an anniversary speech marking Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule
on this date in 1945, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak proposed high-level
inter-Korean dialogue and said he is willing to convince the international
community to help develop the impoverished North given they abandon their nuclear
ambitions. North Korea is currently under international financial sanctions for
its second nuclear test conducted in May.
Lee's bold proposals, conditioned on Pyongyang's denuclearization, suggest his
hard-line principles toward the North remain little changed.
"I sincerely hope the sides can talk with open hearts to find out how North Korea
will give up its nuclear weapons," Lee said.
Seoul officials still did not rule out the possibility that Kim may at the last
minute meet with the Hyundai chairwoman. The two met for the first time in 2005
and twice more in 2007 to seal agreements on North Korea tour projects.
In place of a meeting with Kim, Hyun instead dined on Thursday with a prominent
Workers' Party department director, Kim Yang-gon, who has spearheaded
inter-Korean exchanges, Seoul officials said. What they discussed was not known.
In contrast, Kim granted a meeting with former U.S. President Bill Clinton just
hours after he arrived in Pyongyang to bring two detained American journalists
home last week.
Hyun has business issues to resolve with the North Korean leader. Hyundai has
invested some US$1.2 billion in joint industrial and tourism projects in North
Korea, which were suspended or scaled down last year as political relations
unraveled, causing massive deficits to the company.
The South Korean government suspended Hyundai's major tourism program to North
Korea's Mount Kumgang in July last year after a female tourist was shot dead by a
North Korean solider there.
Another Hyundai tour program to the historic border town of Kaesong was closed by
North Korea in December in retaliation against the South's hard-line posture.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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