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Hyundai Group chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun has taken the unusual step of posting her feelings on Hyundai Asan¡¯s embattled North Korean tourism projects on the company website. The move came after Pyongyang slashed the tourist quota for Hyundai Asan tours to the North's Kumgang Mountains in protest at the ouster of the company¡¯s vice chairman Kim Yoon-kyu, for many years its point man in negotiations with the Stalinist country. Additional projects in Kaesong and Mt.Baekdu that were at the trial stage have stalled.
Hyun said the two sides had come to a watershed where they must decide whether to continue with the tourism projects. The chairwoman, who was the prime mover behind Kim¡¯s ouster, said that she could not decide the matter on her own as the projects were not only the lifetime projects of the group¡¯s late founder Chung Ju-yung and her late husband Hyundai Asan chief Chung Mong-hun, but also "projects of the unification earnestly desired by the whole people."
"Last time I visited the Kumgang Mountains, I was even forced to open my handbag, but despite the contempt, I thought of only one thing,¡± she wrote in the statement posted Monday. ¡°There are people who have given their lives for the project¡± -- a reference to her husband¡¯s suicide -- ¡°so that insult was nothing, and I will not give up."
Hyun said she had no choice but to sack the vice chairman, regretful though it was to dismiss a man who advised both Chungs. She denied the decision was motivated by pettiness or arrogance that arose after Hyun met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il but was taken for the future of the company's North Korea projects.
The vice chairman¡¯s corruption ¡°went beyond personal improprieties and was becoming a fatal flaw in the integrity of the entire corporation, and it was a grave decision taken so that there would be no doubt cast on the ethics of the projects we pursue in the future,¡± Hyun wrote.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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