Hyun, Kim Finally Meet
By Kim Sue-young
Staff Reporter
Hyundai Group Chairwoman Hyun Jung-eun finally met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il according to North Korea media Sunday after extending her stay in Pyongyang five times.
What they discussed has yet to be reported but observers speculate that Hyun might have suggested ways to resume inter-Korean projects including the suspended tours to Mt. Geumgang.
``Leader Kim Jong-il met with the Hyundai Group Chairwoman,'' the North's official Korean Central Television said.
Kim was accompanied by Workers Party department director, Kim Yang-gon _ who has led inter-Korean exchanges and met with Hyun last Thursday _ it added.
But the agency did not elaborate on the time and place of the meeting or an afterward luncheon.
Hyun visited Pyongyang last Monday in a bid to win the release of a Hyundai employee detained in North Korea for more than 130 days and to resume suspended inter-Korean projects.
The chairwoman successfully accomplished the first mission to save the detainee as the 44-year-old Yu Seong-jin safely returned home last Thursday reportedly for no cost.
An observer says that the five extensions indicated that the communist state and the conglomerate had struggled over ``what to give and take.''
``Hyun might have brought some presents for North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to break through the current hardship but Kim might have asked for what she couldn't offer,'' said professor Yang Moo-jin at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
``A meeting (between Hyun and Kim) are not government-to-government talks. If North Korea had called for something that only the government could provide, she would not have been able to make a decision,'' the professor said.
Amid no reports of what was discussed, observers believe they talked on the resumption of tours to Mt. Geumgang.
Trips to the scenic mountain have been suspended since July last year after a South Korean female tourist was shot dead by a North Korean soldier.
She was reported to have strayed into a military restricted zone during a pre-dawn stroll. But it remains unclear what happened as North Korea refused to conduct a joint on-site inspection.
Professor Yang speculated that the extensions of Hyun's trip might show that ``the company is quite desperate.''
Since the suspension of the tour project and North Korea restricted border-crossings to a joint industrial complex in Gaeseong, Hyundai Asan, Hyundai's business unit operating inter-Korean projects, has incurred financial losses, according to reports.
Hyun is scheduled return to Seoul today with Hyundai Asan Chairman Cho Kun-shik, who went to Gaeseong last week.
Meanwhile, President Lee Myung-bak thinks that it would be appropriate to have summit with Kim when the circumstances are right, a Cheong Wa Dae official said.