Mick Hartley

No word yet as to whether or not there were any background deals behind the Clinton-inspired release of the two US journalists from North Korea, but we're now hearing about the deal that secured the release of the South Korean hostage, after talks with Hyundai chairwoman Hyun Jung-eun – the enormous woman pictured here with the Dear Leader (well, either that or the Dear Leader is shrinking):

Hyundai Asan will resume package tours to Mt. Kumgang and Kaesong and start tour programs to Mt. Baekdu. The joint Korean Kaesong Industrial Complex will be put back on track, and North Korea will resume reunions of separated families on Chuseok or Korean Thanksgiving in October.

Those were the results of a meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and Hyundai Group chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun, announced in a press release by Hyun and North Korea's Asia Pacific Peace Committee on Monday.

Kaesong is the ill-fated – and, frankly, ill-conceived – industrial complex just inside North Korea where South Korea companies can employ labour for dirt-cheap wages; wages which are then, according to reliable reports, immediately confiscated by the Dear Leader's minions; ie it's all effectively based on slave labour. Hyundai are the main investors.

The South Korean government distanced itself Monday from an agreement struck between a South Korean company and North Korea to restart tourism projects, saying it is a private deal and calling for official state-to-state negotiations.

Seoul sees the agreement, which also covers reunions for families with members split between the North and South, "positively," said Chun Hae-sung, a spokesman for the South's unification ministry, which oversees relations with the North.

But, he said, "the governments of South and North Korea need to work out a concrete agreement through dialogue" before visits by South Koreans to tourist sites in the North can begin again. A resumption of reunions would require talks between the Red Cross organizations of the two sides, he said.

Trips by South Koreans to the Mount Kumgang resort on North Korea's east coast were halted after a North Korean soldier shot and killed a female South Korean tourist visiting the area last year. The North refused to participate in a joint investigation of the incident.

By allowing tourism to resume at the Mount Kumgang resort, located in North Korea and run [by] a Hyundai affiliate, Pyongyang can receive tens of millions of dollars by the end of the year.

The North was also seeking to increase wages and rents paid at a joint factory park in the North Korean border city of Kaesong, run by the same Hyundai affiliate, which could again earn its leaders tens of millions of dollars by year's end. 

[Links via The Marmot. Photo from the BBC]

Update: a Dutch insurance commercial's take on North Korea.