Hyundai Motor Co. said on Tuesday it won’t take over Hyundai Asan or engage in any of the firm’s North Korean businesses despite the sudden suicide of Hyundai Asan chairman Chung Mong-hun early on Monday, Dow Jones reported.
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The news agency said the remarks scotch market expectations that Hyundai Motor Group, the country’s fourth largest conglomerate led by Hyundai Motor, could take over Hyundai Asan’s businesses to minimise uncertainties over the future management of Hyundai Group.
Although Chung held no formal positions in Hyundai Group companies other than Hyundai Asan, as the son of the late former founder, he was still involved in the conglomerate’s activities and also held stakes in several Hyundai Group affiliates, Dow Jones added.
“We will continue to focus solely on our core automobile operations, to become one of the global top five car makers by 2010. That is our consistent business goal that we have sought since the company separated from the Hyundai Group,” Hyundai Motor spokesman Jake Jang told Dow Jones.
Hyundai Motor Group, whose chairman is the late Chung Mong-hun’s older brother, Chung Mong-koo, was once a part of Hyundai Group but separated from the group in September 2000, the report noted.
Dow Jones noted that Hyundai Asan runs a series of joint ventures with communist North Korea but added that Jang said Hyundai Motor’s decision to stay independent from Hyundai Asan and its North Korean business is motivated by “pure business and commercial sense”.
The report said Chung Mong-hun, who was embroiled in a scandal over a historic 2000 inter-Korea summit, committed suicide on Monday by jumping from his office on the 12th storey of Hyundai headquarters building in Seoul; police said reasons for his suicide weren’t clear.
According to Dow Jones, Chung had reportedly been under heavy stress and had been on trial on charges stemming from allegations his company helped former president Kim Dae-jung’s government secretly pay North Korea $US100 million to get Pyongyang (the North Korean government) to agree to a summit between the divided Koreas.
