Suicide jump of executive caught in industrial scandal

A SENIOR executive with South Korean industrial giant Hyundai, whose business spearheaded reconciliation efforts with North Korea but ended up tangled in debt and scandal, leapt to his death from his 12th-floor office window yesterday.

A caretaker found 54-year-old Chung Mong-hun’s body in shrubbery at Hyundai headquarters in central Seoul. At first he thought it was a slumbering drunk.

Chung was on trial on charges stemming from allegations that his company, Hyundai-Asan, helped former President Kim Dae-jung’s government secretly pay North Korea some €100 million to get Pyongyang to agree to a summit between the Koreas in 2000.