North snubs Hyundai Group chair's visit request

Hyun Jeong-eun, chairwoman of Hyundai Group, and other members of her delegation pay respect to late chairman Chung Mong-hun during a memorial service at Mount Kumgang on Aug. 3, 2018. [YONHAP]

Hyun Jeong-eun, chairwoman of Hyundai Group, withdrew an application to visit Mount Kumgang in North Korea after Pyongyang refused to respond to the request, the Unification Ministry said Monday.

"Hyundai Asan said that it will withdraw its request to North Korea, and the central government will accept it today," Unification Ministry spokesman Koo Byoung-sam said in a briefing.

This comes after Pyongyang said last weekend that it has "no intention to examine" Hyun's request after South Korean media reported her plans to visit the Mount Kumgang resort.

Hyundai Asan, the arm of the South Korean conglomerate that engages in inter-Korean projects, built a resort at Mount Kumgang, symbolic of the "Sunshine Policy" of the Kim Dae-jung administration.

However, South Korea suspended tourism to the Kumgang resort after a visiting South Korean woman was shot dead by a North Korean soldier in July 2008.

Last Friday, the Unification Ministry confirmed reports that Hyun was seeking to visit Mount Kumgang next month to hold a memorial service to mark the 20th anniversary of the death of her husband Chung Mong-hun, former chairman of Hyundai Group, which falls on Aug. 4.

Submitting a request to the ministry is required as part of a two-step process for South Koreans seeking to visit to the North. The second part requires individuals to request their North Korean counterparts for an invitation to visit.

If the North Korean entity issues such an invitation, it is then submitted to the Unification Ministry, who will grant formal government permission.

The North Korean Foreign Ministry through state media last Saturday brushed off the request, saying that it has a policy of not permitting the entry of South Korean nationals into its territory.

"We make it clear that we have neither been informed about any South Korean personage's willingness for visit nor known about it and that we have no intention to examine it," Kim Song-il, a director general of the North's Foreign Ministry, was quoted as saying by its official Korean Central News Agency.

It is rare for North Korea to express its position on issues related to inter-Korean relations through its Foreign Ministry, which oversees foreign policy, rather than through the North's Workers' Party's United Front Department or the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, which are agencies that specifically deal with South Korea matters.

On Saturday, the Unification Ministry said in a statement that "it is very regrettable that the North Korean side unilaterally refused a visit to the North for the purpose of a purely memorial event."

The late Chung was the son and successor of Chung Ju-yung, the founder of Hyundai Group, formerly South Korea’s biggest conglomerate.

The North Korean Foreign Ministry's handling of the visitation issue is viewed as Pyongyang treating South Korea under the Yoon Suk Yeol administration as a foreign state, as opposed to promoting an inter-Korean relationship.

North Korea’s change in attitude towards Hyundai Group also came as a surprise considering that it has had close ties with the South Korean conglomerate that lasted for a quarter of a century.

The group’s founder Chung was born in Tongchon County in North Korea’s Kangwon Province and pursued numerous projects that were either humanitarian or business-related after he crossed the inter-Korea border with 1,001 cows in 1998.

It was an achievement made almost a decade after Chung became the first South Korean businessman to visit the North in 1989.

Also during his visit in 1998, then-North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, father of current leader Kim Jong-un, met with Chung during his stay.

Hyundai Group was the first South Korean company to develop tourism in Mount Kumkang.

The first group of South Koreans to tour Mt. Kumkang came via a ship that traveled from South Korea's east coast in November 1998. The first tour bus via land arrived in February 2003.

Hyun last held a memorial service for late chairman Chung Mong-hun at Mount Kumgang in 2018, to mark the 15th anniversary of his death.

BY SARAH KIM, LEE HO-JEONG [kim.sarah@joongang.co.kr]