By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
The fatal shooting of a South Korean woman by a North Korean solider at the Mt. Geumgang resort has Hyundai Asan breathing heavily on the ropes as it struggles to keep its cross-border tourism business afloat.
The company has been criticized for what was exposed as its loose control of tourist activities following the death of 53-year-old Park Wang-ja, who is believed to have been shot after wandering into a military zone near her beachfront hotel.
With the government suspending tours to Mt. Geumgang indefinitely, depriving the company of its biggest revenue source momentarily, and the chances for a quick resolution looking faint, Hyundai Asan is enduring its darkest hours since former Chairman Chung Mong-hun leaped out of his 12th floor office window in 2003.
With the government failing to establish a dialogue channel due to the currently difficult relationship between the two Koreas, Hyundai Asan chief executive Yoon Man-joon was a lonely visitor to the North Saturday as he demanded Pyongyang officials investigate the shooting and guarantee similar incidents would be prevented in the future.
``Yoon met with North Korean officials at the Mt. Geumgang resort around 4 p.m. Saturday to get an explanation of how the incident occurred and to discuss measures that should be taken, and they are currently continuing the talks as well," said a Hyundai Asan spokesman Sunday afternoon. The company declined to confirm the names of the North Korean officials Yoon met or the content of their talks.
Hyundai Asan said all 350 tourists who visited Mt. Geumgang returned home Sunday, which leaves about 1,500 of the company's employees and other South Korean businessmen remaining at the North Korean tourism enclave. With the Mt. Geumgang tour programs halted, Hyundai Asan will consider reducing its staff at the mountain resort, company officials said.
The shooting death clouds the 10th anniversary of Hyundai Asan starting the North Korean tours, and Chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun, the widow of the late Chung, is bracing for a crisis that may dwarf the company's troubles following the North Korean nuclear test in 2006.
Although about 1.94 million South Koreans visited the North so far through Hyundai Asan, the cross-border package tours have remained a money-losing business for the company, which suffered a net loss of 9.64 billion won (about $9.3 million) in the first quarter of this year.
The company is now forced to cancel the bookings of at least 70,000 people who applied for the Mt. Geumgang tours during the July-September period, which amounts to about 21 billion won in losses.
Considering the extra demand of the peak holiday season and the costs for operating the hotels, duty-free shops and hiring local employees, the losses could easily bloat to somewhere between 30 billion won and 40 billion won, a significant blow to a company that posted around 300 billion won in sales last year.
The tourism business accounted for about 45 percent of the company's revenue last year. And the Mt. Geumgang tours accounted for about 70 percent of the company's revenue from tourism.
Hyundai Asan had hoped North Korea would move quickly to ease South Koreans' anger over Park's death, as the Mt. Geumgang tours have been an important cash cow for the Stalinist state.
However, with North Korea rather choosing to be defiant and going as far as to blame the South for Park's death, a reflection of its uneasy relationship with the Lee Myung-bak government, Hyundai Asan officials are now living their worst nightmare.
It was supposed to be a better year for Hyundai Asan, which began to offer package tours to Gaeseong starting last year and had been in talks with North Korean authorities over opening a direct flight route to Mt. Baekdu. However, with the North even threatening to suspend all tourism programs if the South refuses to apologize, the company could only hope that their Gaeseong tours remain unaffected.
Park's death has triggered criticism that Hyundai Asan had loose control over the activities of South Korean tourists in the North. The company had no personnel to keep tourists from trespassing in the military area that was easily accessible from the beach in front of the hotel.
And despite receiving an official report of Park's death around 11 a.m. Friday, Hyundai Asan allowed another group of 302 tourists to leave for the North around 3:30 p.m.