Value context and insight. lkm@koreatimes.co.kr
Jim Rogers to be outside director at Ananti
Jim Rogers Korea Times file
By Lee Kyung-min
By Lee Kyung-min
Legendary investor Jim Rogers will be appointed as an outside director of Ananti, according to a leisure company, Friday.
The move has raised expectation that the long-stalled inter-Korean cooperation could resume through the American known for his vocal support for the need to warm toward the isolationist North.
Ananti owns a large-scale resort with a golf course and an outdoor hot spring at Mt. Geumgang in North Korea.
The firm said a board meeting will be convened Dec. 27 to pass the motion to appoint him for a three-year term.
Many experts say the inter-Korean economic projects could find momentum given the company holds a right to operate the leisure facility at the scenic resort and with the fast thawing of longstanding military tension.
The resort closed only two months after it opened after a North Korean soldier killed a South Korean tourist in 2008 claiming that she “provoked” him by not immediately complying with his order to halt.
Rogers, one of the world's three most famous investors together with George Soros and Warren Buffet, is expected to serve as an adviser to the company, which is in need of a specific, hands-on consultation from a global figure.
He has long called for the South to take measures to help the North open and reform its economy rather than resorting to military provocation every year.
He also said in an earlier interview with The Korea Times that “unification will become a breakthrough for Korea to overcome various economic challenges.”
The multimillionaire investor said at the time that the North has plenty of natural resources and cheap, disciplined labor, while the South has plenty of capital, knowhow and a large market.
“So when you put two countries together, while everybody else is suffering, you will have dynamics that other countries won't have at the time. That is a reason you need unification. They need you and you need them in the future.”