Hyundai chief in North Korea to urge release of detained SKorean worker

Hyundai chief in NKorea seeking worker’s release

SEOUL, South Korea — The chief of South Korean conglomerate Hyundai has traveled to North Korea seeking the freedom of an employee held by the communist regime — a week after a trip by former President Bill Clinton sealed the release of two American journalists.

The 44-year-old South Korean technician, who has only been identified by his family name, Yu, was detained four months ago for allegedly denouncing the North’s political system. He worked in a joint industrial park where South Korean-run factories employ North Korean workers.

Hyundai has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the Kaesong industrial park and a joint tourist project promoted by previous South Korean governments to boost cooperation with the North. But renewed tension between the rivals has seen a suspension in trips to the North by South Korean tourists, while the industrial park now only has a skeleton South Korean staff.

On Monday, Hyundai Group Chairwoman Hyun Jung-eun drove across the heavily fortified border for a three-day visit. She said before her departure she would seek the worker’s release. Company officials also say she will discuss restarting joint projects in North Korea.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency reported in a brief dispatch that Hyun’s delegation was greeted in Pyongyang by North Korean officials.

“The release of the detained worker is the most urgent issue,” said Kim Ha-young, a spokesman at Hyundai’s business arm, Hyundai Asan.

The release last week of Californian journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for entering the country illegally in March, has raised hopes for the South Korean worker. It followed a surprise visit by Clinton and rare talks with reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

Although the former president visited in a private capacity, his trip was widely seen helping ease months of growing tensions on the Korean peninsula. Critics, however, said it amounted to a diplomatic coup for Kim, coming within months of the North conducting its second nuclear test and facing new U.N. sanctions.

South Korean and Japanese officials said that during his talks, Clinton urged the North to free South Korean detainees and to address decades-old abductions of Japanese citizens.

In addition to the Hyundai technician, the North is also holding four South Korean fishermen whose boat was seized after straying accidentally into Northern waters.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Robert A. Wood said the U.S. wants “to see the release of all people that are being held by the North.”

Yang Moo-jin, a professor at Seoul’s University of North Korean Studies, said chances for the worker’s release are “very high” because of Clinton’s reported request and the North’s desire to improve ties with the U.S. He predicted the worker could return home with Hyun on Wednesday or be deported before then.

Paik Hak-soon, analyst at the Sejong Institute, a private think thank, was less sure but expected Hyun to hold a “a decisive discussion” on the detainee’s fate.

South Korean media, including the mass-circulation JoongAng Ilbo newspaper, said Hyun may meet Kim Jong Il during her trip, but Hyundai Asan said she doesn’t have any plans to meet him.

Earlier Monday, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said it has also made “all necessary efforts” to win the worker’s release. Spokesman Chun Hae-sung, however, refused to say whether the Hyundai chief would carry a South Korean government message to the North.

South Korean officials say they have so far been refused access to the technician and opportunity to assess the allegations against him.

The two Koreas technically remain at war since their 1950-53 Korean conflict ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty. After a period of warming ties, relations have deteriorated since the conservative President Lee Myung-bak took office in South Korea last year advocating a tougher policy on the North.

Associated Press writer Wanjin Park in Paju, South Korea contributed to this report.