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Tycoon's suicide a blow to inter-Korea
business
By Ahn Mi Young
SEOUL -
Those who turned up at the funeral last Friday of Chung
Mong-hun were mourning not only the death of the heir to
the conglomerate Hyundai, but the end for now of his
dream of having South Korea doing booming business with
North Korea.
That is because Chung, heir to what
was once the country's largest conglomerate or
chaebol had pushed - but got poor results - his
father's quest of having economic ties between the two
Koreas bridge their political and ideological gap.
At the end, separate funerals were held in both
North and South Korea for Chung, 54, who committed
suicide on August 4. He had jumped to his death from the
12th floor of Hyundai's headquarters, amid a political
probe into the secret transfer of funds from his company
to the North Korean government on Seoul's behalf.
Before he committed suicide, Chung underwent
three sessions of a 12-hour probe by prosecutors.
Chung admitted most of the accusations that he
tried to hide proof that he sent US$100 million to North
Korea through South Korean politicians, who used the
money to persuade North Korean leader Kim Jung-il to
hold a historic summit in June 2000 with then South
Korean president Kim Dae-jung.
North Korea had
claimed that Chung was virtually murdered by prosecutors
on the charges cooked up by opposition parties in South
Korea.
Independent investigators say the money
was sent to Pyongyang through Chung's company, Hyundai
Asan, before the June summit, which was instrumental to
Kim Dae-jung's winning the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize.
This is why some say Chung had become a victim
of politics in South Korea's haste to leave a mark on
North-South ties - a remark on a Korean newspaper
website said that Kim Dae-jung "had blood on his hands".
But away from this investigation, Chung was
generally hailed as a "lone contributor to inter-Korean
business", but none said they would take up his
business.
"Family is family. Business is
business," said a senior executive at Hyundai Motor, now
headed by his elder brother Chung Mong-Gu, who has said
that the nation's largest auto maker will stay away from
North-South business ties. To many, Chung Mong-hun's
death came as a sobering reminder that doing business
with North Korea does not make sense at this point,
especially with tensions over North Korea's nuclear
program.
Newspapers such as the Korea Times
reported that Chung's death left a "leadership vacuum"
for a South Korean figure with the clout and drive to
undertake risky economic cooperation with the North - as
well as warm ties with the isolationist regime in
Pyongyang.
"We are adamantly against engaging in
business projects in North Korea," a Hyundai group
official was quoted as saying after the suicide.
"Chairman Chung Mong-gu reconfirmed his opposition after
hearing about his brother's death."
The same
official added that participation in business projects
in North Korea - which have included an ambitious
tourism project - must proceed on the basis of pragmatic
economic factors instead of emotion linked to the dream
of the reunification of the Korean Peninsula.
Chung inherited this task from his father Chung
Ju-young, who died in 2001. Since the launching in
November 1998 of a cruise route, 500,000 South Koreans
have traveled on cruise to scenic spot of Mount Geumgang
in the North.
Many South Koreans have hailed
this tourism link as a "big icebreaker" between two
Koreas.
Indeed, a telephone poll on August 9
after Chung's death by Research Plus of 700 South
Koreans found that 80 percent of the respondents said
Chung's tourism project must carry on.
But many
business leaders, including those the government is
reportedly hoping will take on Chung's mission, know
very well the tourism project was a money-losing
political burden.
The Mount Geumgang project
loses 1 billion won a month ($847,460), because fewer
than expected South Koreans have been taking cruises to
the North.
Chung's hope was that with an
overland tourism route to Mount Geumgang, more South
Koreans would go to North Korea and this would spark
greater economic ties between the two Koreas.
Symbolic of this hope was a groundbreaking
ceremony by Chung on June 30 to construct a huge
industrial complex in the North Korean border city of
Gaesung.
Seventy-six percent of 600 big South
Korean companies polled in recent weeks by the
Federation of Korean Industries said they have no or
little interest in relocating their factories in the
Gaesung Industrial Complex, mostly because of security
concerns over North Korea's nuclear-arms program.
But there are 980 South Korean companies that
have applied for land leases - small factories in
textile, dyeing and footwear that intend to hire cheap
North Korean labor.
"Now, without Chung, these
applicants are nervous," said Lee Sung-hee, an executive
at the South Korea's Federation of Small Business
Industries. "North Korea lost someone like Chung who has
acted as an agent" to do business between South Korean
businesspeople and Northern counterparts.
Han
Sung-seok, president of a small company called Hangyoong
Textile, said in Ansan, 30 kilometers south of Seoul:
"Chung offered me the option of North Korea as a welcome
alternative to Vietnam or Latin America, as I had been
considering Vietnam as a place to relocate my factory.
"There is no way of making business in a place
like South Korea," he said, because of high costs, but
"if I chose Gaesung, at least I don't have to leave
Korea."
Chung in fact wanted to try to attract
foreign investment to keep his troubled economic
projects afloat, but failed to do so.
"It was an
unrealistic expectation from the beginning for Chung to
get foreigners into his tourism project. They would not
invest in the North until it proves economically viable
and financially rational and politically secure," a
Seoul-based journalist said.
North Korea also
paid tribute to Chung, saying that its leader Kim
Jong-il had lost his "only South Korean man" whom
Pyongyang could speak to "heart-to-heart".
The
South Korean independent counsel looking into the
funneling of money to North Korea, appointed by
President Roh Moo-hyun, said in June that Hyundai Asan
sent $500 million to North Korea, but he called $400
million of that an investment by the company. The rest
was raised and sent by Hyundai on behalf of the
government, he said.
(Inter Press
Service)
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