[Kyodo: Korea] North Korea on Thursday released a South Korean employee of the Hyundai Group who had been detained since March at a joint industrial park in the North Korean border town of Kaesong, South Korea's Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae Sung told reporters. The release of the Hyundai engineer identified by South Korean media as Yu Seong Jin came amid the visit to North Korea of Hyundai Group chairwoman Hyun Jung Eun to seek his release. ''I am happy to be back,'' Yu told reporters at the South's border-crossing point shortly after 9 p.m. Yu also expressed gratitude for those who have helped him be freed."And I ain't going back there!"
Meanwhile, presidential spokesman Lee Dong Kwan said, ''even if (the release) came belatedly, it is fortunate that Yu has returned to his family.''
Yu, an employee of Hyundai Asan Corp., the North Korea business arm of the Hyundai Group, was handed over to the South Korean side shortly after 5 p.m. North Korea had detained him on March 30 for allegedly having made critical remarks about the North and trying to induce a North Korean woman to defect to the South.
Speculation had been growing that North Korea would soon free the Hyundai worker in the wake of its pardoning of two detained American journalists during former U.S. President Bill Clinton's recent visit to Pyongyang. The news on the detainee's release came after Hyun extended her stay in the North by one day earlier Thursday amid speculation she was waiting for a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
The joint industrial complex at Kaesong is a major symbol of inter-Korean reconciliation that combines the South's capital and technology and the North's cheap labor. More than 100 South Korean firms currently operate in the complex, making clothes, kitchenware, electronic equipment and other labor-intensive goods employing about 40,000 North Korean workers.