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Concerns over payoff to N. Korea voiced©Associated PressJanuary 31, 2003 SEOUL, South Korea -- South Korea's main opposition party asked President Kim Dae Jung on Thursday to clear up suspicions that his government spent nearly $200-million to "buy" its crowning achievement: a historic summit with North Korea that helped Kim win the Nobel Peace Prize. Allegations of payoffs to the North first arose last year but grew more substantial with media reports that a subsidiary of the Hyundai business group sent funds to North Korea about a week before the summit. On Thursday, government auditors confirmed that Hyundai -- closely tied to Kim's policy of rapprochement with North Korea -- borrowed $186-million from a government-run bank shortly before the summit and used it for unclear purposes in the communist state. "We could not find out for what specific projects Hyundai used the money," Sohn Seung Tae, deputy director of the audit agency, said of its investigation. "Hyundai failed to provide data." The heightened scandal hits Kim's presidency in its final days, casting doubt on his success with the North just as his last diplomatic project there -- to find a peaceful solution to the furor over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program -- made little progress. Two Seoul envoys to the North, representing Kim and his successor, President-elect Roh Moo Hyun, returned from a trip to Pyongyang apparently failing to budge Communist leaders in their stalemate with the United States. Opposition politicians have criticized President Kim's "sunshine" policy of engagement with North Korea, saying he pampered the Stalinist country with economic aid and other concessions. "This proves that this government's biggest achievement, the June 15 South-North summit, was bought with money," opposition party spokesman Park Jong Hee said. Both Hyundai and the South Korean president have denied allegations of payoffs, and the business group had no immediate reaction to Thursday's disclosure. Hyundai launched a series of high-profile, government-backed investment projects in the North in 1998, but the projects -- including a plan for an industrial park and a tourism project in the North's Diamond Mountain -- incurred heavy losses. The political opposition demanded that prosecutors investigate whether Hyundai used the money to bribe North Korea's Communist government, or if Kim's government funneled the money through Hyundai to pay off the North for holding the summit. "President Kim must explain before the public the suspicion about a behind-the-scene deal with North Korea and apologize," party spokesman Park said. The opposition party denounced the audit report as a coverup. The auditors said they had no legal ground to prosecute Hyundai officials, and President Kim, who leaves office in late February after a five-year term, said he opposed prosecutors investigating the case. "If the money was spent on promoting South-North economic cooperation, it is not desirable to make it a subject of judicial judgment for the sake of national interests," Kim was quoted as saying by his spokeswoman, Park Sun Sook. "The unique nature of South-North relations has forced me to make numerous tough decisions as the head of state, and I always put the interests of our people and nation at the forefront." Kim, who won the Nobel Prize chiefly for his efforts to reconcile with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, said Hyundai's joint projects in the North have "the nature of national projects" as well as being private ventures. Geir Lundestad, the secretary for the Nobel Peace Prize committee in Oslo, Norway, said Thursday the group had no comment on the allegations against Kim, noting they had not been substantiated.
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