Hyundai Group chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun met Kim Jong-il for luncheon on Sunday after a weeklong wait while the reclusive North Korean leader attended to other business. North Korean Central Broadcasting reported around 9 p.m. Kim "met the chairwoman of Hyundai Group in South Korea."

It added Kim Yang-gon, the chairman of the North's Asia-Pacific Committee and director of the United Front Department of the North Korean Workers' Party, was also present. Kim Yang-gon reportedly fine-tuned the agenda with Hyun last Thursday.

The state-run channel said Hyun "presented a gift" to Kim Jong-il during the meeting, who thanked her. Kim remembered Hyun's predecessors at the Hyundai Group "with deep emotions" and the two engaged in "warm compatriotic talk," it added.

This photo taken on Sunday shows Hyundai Group chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun (front left) posing with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il (front center) and Kim Yang-gon, the director of North Korea's United Front Department (rear left). Hyun was finally able to meet the North Korean leader after a weeklong wait. /North Korean Central News Agency-Newsis

Hyun extended her stay in the North several times to meet Kim. If she returns on Monday, she will have been in the North for a whole week.

Specific contents of what the two discussed are not known, but according to the joint press release from Hyundai Group and Asia-Pacific Peace Committee on Monday, North Korea agreed to resume inter-Korean tourism projects and facilitate operation of the joint industrial park.

Hyun has several business interests in North Korea, all of them precarious including package tours to Mt. Kumgang and to Kaesong as well as the joint Korean Kaesong Industrial Complex. The South Korean government suspended tour programs to Mt.Kumgang in the wake of the fatal shooting of a South Korean tourist there in July last year. Seoul is asking for an apology, an on-the-sport investigation, and a promise to prevent similar incidents before the tours can resume.

In three earlier meetings with Kim, Hyun won permission to operate package tours to Kaesong and Mt. Baekdu. A Unification Ministry official said North Korea already expressed its willingness to lift a travel ban to Kaesong area in formal inter-Korean talks in June. He said that must be one of Hyun's aims. The Kaesong industrial park, which Hyundai Asan operates, faces an uncertain future after North Korea demanded a hefty wage hike for workers and more money for the already paid land lease.

Hyun had looked forward to a meeting with Kim Jong-il, while keeping extending her stay in the North, apparently because of the special nature of North Korea where all policies are made by Kim alone. Hyundai faced an urgent situation as far as its North Korean projects are concerned to the point that Hyun had to "throw a die" in her meeting with Kim lately. Asan has lost W153.6 billion (US$1=W1,239) due to the suspension of the package tours in July last year and Kaesong in November.

A source said Hyun apparently promised the North to give humanitarian aid through civic groups in return for the release of Yu Seong-jin, a Hyundai Asan staffer, who was freed last week after 136 days of detention. The Unification Ministry has recently resumed indirect aid to the North through charities, which it suspended after the North's latest nuclear test.

But experts cautioned against high hopes for Hyun's meeting with Kim. "There is a high likelihood that Kim met Hyun merely out of courtesy because of his personal relationship with the Hyundai owner's family," Prof. Kim Yong-hyun of Dongguk University said.

Prof. Lee Jo-won of Chung-Ang University warned of opposition if Seoul decides to resume food and fertilizer aid to the North at a time when there is no change in North Korea's basic attitude on the nuclear issue and the U.S. is pursuing sanctions against Pyongyang.

Joint South-Korean-U.S. military exercises start Monday, making it unlikely that relations will improve significantly soon. A North Korean Army statement on Saturday warned of a response with nuclear weapons "if the U.S. imperialists and the Lee Myung-bak clique threaten us with such weapons. We are going to retaliate mercilessly in our own way."