Hyundai Group chief heads to North Korea to try to win release of detained SKorean worker

Hyundai chief heads to NKorea to discuss detainee

SEOUL, South Korea —The chairwoman of South Korea’s Hyundai Group conglomerate headed to Pyongyang on Monday to try to win the release of a detained employee and to discuss restarting joint projects in North Korea.

Hyundai has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into joint projects in North Korea, including tours to a famed mountain resort and ancient sights in Kaesong city, and a joint industrial park where South Korean-run factories employ North Korean workers.

But North Korea halted the tours last year amid tensions with the South. While the factory park remained open with a skeleton South Korean staff, the North in early March detained a South Korean manager for allegedly denouncing the regime’s political system and has not allowed Seoul officials access to the man.

The North was also still holding four South Korean fishermen and their boat seized last month after the vessel accidentally strayed into northern waters.

Speaking to reporters before entering the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas for the drive to Pyongyang, Hyundai Group Chairwoman Hyun Jung-eun said she would try to secure the employee’s release.

Her three-day visit comes on the heels of former President Bill Clinton’s journey to Pyongyang last week to secure the release of two American journalists, Euna Lee and Lisa Ling, sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for entering the country illegally in March.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il pardoned the women last Tuesday and ordered their release.

Hyun is expected to focus on securing the worker’s release and persuading the North to resume tours to Diamond Mountain and Kaesong, both operated by Hyundai Asan, the group’s North Korea business arm, said Kim Ha-young, a Hyundai Asan spokesman.

“The release of the detained worker is the most urgent issue,” the spokesman said.

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 the North Korean leader.

In Seoul, the Unification Ministry, which handles relations with the North, 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 and Japanese officials said Clinton, during rare talks with Kim Jong Il, urged the North to free the South Koreans and to address decades-old abductions of Japanese citizens.

Yang Moo-jin, a professor at Seoul’s University of North Korean Studies, said chances for the worker’s release are “very high” because the North wants to improve ties with the U.S. and cannot ignore Clinton’s request. He said the worker could return home with Hyun on Wednesday or be released in the form of a deportation prior to the Hyundai chief’s return.

Analyst Paik Hak-soon at the private think thank Sejong Institute also said Hyun would have “a decisive discussion” on the detainee with the North Koreans, though said he wasn’t sure when he would be released.

North Korea’s Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, said Monday that it would keep a close eye on the international response to South Korea’s plans to launch a satellite into space.

South Korea is aiming to send its first space launch vehicle, or rocket, from its own soil as early as next week.

North Korea’s own launch in April drew international criticism and U.N. Security Council condemnation as a violation of resolutions prohibiting the regime from engaging in ballistic missile-related activity. Experts say the rocket sent into the skies could be used to fire a long-range missile.

Pyongyang’s Foreign Ministry did not say in the statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency what action North Korea would take if Seoul’s launch is not referred to the Security Council.

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.