From the Joong Ang Daily
10/13/2006
Seo Ji-eun
Hyun Jeong-eun, the Hyundai Group chairwoman, may face a serious problem soon: If tourist departures for the North Korean resort area of Mount Kumgang continue in their slump, should she end the operation? And if she does, what happens to the Hyundai Group’s leading role in developing business ties with North Korea, including its exclusive right to conduct tours there for South Koreans?
Hyundai Asan, the group subsidiary that operates the tours, said yesterday that only 549 tourists traveled to the mountain area, now ablaze in fall colors. A day earlier, the number was 788. The company said that 4 percent of its travelers canceled on Monday, when the North announced that it had conducted a nuclear test; yesterday, 65 percent of those who had signed up for the trip cancelled.
Even if the problem continues long enough for an “ordinary” company to think about pulling out of the business, Hyundai’s problem involves other elements of the group and more than just cash flow.
Hyundai Asan won exclusive rights to an inter-Korean tourist business in late 1998, and has set a goal of expanding its corporate sphere across the country. It plans to take tourists to Kaesong and to Mount Paektu and has an ambitious construction program to support. Shutting down the Kumgang tours could endanger that strategy because of North Korea’s long memory and penchant to hold grudges. Once out, Hyundai fears it may never again get in.
North Korea has earned about $500 million so far from the Mount Kumgang tours.
And Hyundai Group’s heritage is bound up in North Korea businesses. Cross-border business dealings were initiated by Chung Ju-yung, the group’s founder, and that business was inherited by his son, Chung Mong-hun, who committed suicide during his trial on charges of helping secretly funnel cash to the North to set up the first inter-Korean summit in 2000. Since Ms. Hyun succeeded her husband three years ago, her husband’s other brothers have been jockeying to seize control of the group from her through stock transactions, in order to reinstate the direct blood line from the group’s founder to its current management.
Ms. Hyun has often stressed that it is she who is the true champion of the founder’s spirit through her persistence in conducting business with North Korea.
In the view of some analysts, that argument could be weakened significantly by shutting down the tours, perhaps inducing group subsidiaries such as the Hyundai Department Store chain, which has remained neutral in the family feud, to turn against Ms. Hyun.
