ad info




TIME Asia
TIME Asia Home
Current Issue
Magazine Archive
Asia Buzz
Travel Watch
Web Features
  Entertainment
  Photo Essays

Subscribe to TIME
Customer Services
About Us
Write to TIME Asia

TIME.com
TIME Canada
TIME Europe
TIME Pacific
TIME Digital
Asiaweek
Latest CNN News

Young China
Olympics 2000
On The Road

 ASIAWEEK.COM
 CNN.COM
  east asia
  southeast asia
  south asia
  central asia
  australasia
 BUSINESS
 SPORTS
 SHOWBIZ
 ASIA WEATHER
 ASIA TRAVEL


Other News
From TIME Asia

Culture on Demand: Black is Beautiful
The American Express black card is the ultimate status symbol

Asia Buzz: Should the Net Be Free?
Web heads want it all -- for nothing

JAPAN: Failed Revolution
Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori clings to power as dissidents in his party finally decide not to back a no-confidence motion

Cover: Endgame?
After Florida's controversial ballot recount, Bush holds a 537-vote lead in the state, which could give him the election

TIME Digest
FORTUNE.com
FORTUNE China
MONEY.com

TIME Asia Services
Subscribe
Subscribe to TIME! Get up to 3 MONTHS FREE!

Bookmark TIME
TIME Media Kit
Recent awards

TIME Asia Asiaweek Asia Now TIME Asia story
JUNE 12, 2000 VOL. 157 NO. 23

Business Ties
A South Korean entrepreneur thinks the era of détente will be lucrative
By DONALD MACINTYRE

  ALSO IN TIME

COVER: FIJI: Rule of Flaw
The military tries to restore normalcy after last month's coup, but can anybody govern the tiny Pacific nation?

THE PHILIPPINES: Estrada Has His Say The President responds to a profile in Time that has become one of the hottest topics in his country

KOREAN PENINSULA: Summit of Hope As the leaders of the two Koreas prepare for their historic meeting in Pyongyang next week, millions of families divided by war pray for a chance to meet their long-lost relatives
Yankee Go Home: Anti-Americanism flares in the South
Family Finder: An entrepreneur offers a way across the divide
Love From Seoul: A young girl writes to her unknown kin

INDIA: Ad Infinitum
A playful TV spot peps up the age-old Coke vs. Pepsi war

NEPAL: Rapid Rise
Sherpa tribesmen break records but win little respect for their impressive conquests of Mount Everest

TRAVEL WATCH:
Own a Piece of Paradise--for a Few Weeks a Year

Is there money to be made from reconciliation? Chung Young Chul hopes so. The 55-year-old businessman, who fled the North during the war as a young boy, recently set up Union Community, a company that hopes to profit by helping South Koreans locate their relatives in the North and remit cash to them. It's an unprecedented venture that violates current South Korean law. But Chung is optimistic. Pyongyang, he says, supports his business, while Seoul is expected to write new laws to allow such transactions. "Solving the problem of separated families," says Chung, "is the start of solving the problem of reunification."

The idea behind Union Community is simple. South Korean families pay the company the equivalent of $1,200 for an initial search in the North, carried out by North Korean officials. Pyongyang gets a $500 cut for handling the paperwork. For each remittance, Union Community will charge $250. Pyongyang will get a $50 piece of this, too:since the communist country doesn't have retail banks with branches around the country, government employees will have to deliver the money personally to families outside big cities. In less than a month, Chung's company has signed up more than 120 people to search for long-lost relatives.

Before Union Community came along, South Koreans seeking to send money across the border had to go through ethnic Korean brokers near China's border with the North. Many still use that route, at their peril. Brokers often can't locate the sought-after relative or simply walk off with the money. Korean-Americans have found that sending the funds through the North Korean government isn't much more reliable. It is difficult for Americans to remit money directly to the North, so they have often gone through intermediaries in China and Seoul, who negotiate unofficially with North Korean cadres. Sometimes not all of the money reaches the relatives. Chung believes his operation will succeed because it is in Pyongyang's interest. "North Korea badly needs the hard currency and knows it has to play by the rules to make this work," he says.

It's a good deal for Pyongyang, which takes its cut in U.S. dollars while paying the families in the local currency at the official rate of 2.2 won to the dollar, far below the market rate. Chung says he set up the venture in part to honor his father, who also fled the North during the war. As he lay dying in 1994, he presented his son with a list of relatives left behind and asked him to search for them one day. "Now maybe I can locate my uncles, aunts, cousins and nephews as my father wished," says Chung. For many South Koreans, that would be worth almost any price.

With reporting by Stella Kim/Seoul


Write to TIME at mail@web.timeasia.com

This edition's table of contents
TIME Asia home


AsiaNow


Quick Scroll: More stories from TIME, Asiaweek and CNN

   LATEST HEADLINES:

WASHINGTON
U.S. secretary of state says China should be 'tolerant'

MANILA
Philippine government denies Estrada's claim to presidency

ALLAHABAD
Faith, madness, magic mix at sacred Hindu festival

COLOMBO
Land mine explosion kills 11 Sri Lankan soldiers

TOKYO
Japan claims StarLink found in U.S. corn sample

BANGKOK
Thai party announces first coalition partner



TIME:

COVER: President Joseph Estrada gives in to the chanting crowds on the streets of Manila and agrees to make room for his Vice President

THAILAND: Twin teenage warriors turn themselves in to Bangkok officials

CHINA: Despite official vilification, hip Chinese dig Lamaist culture

PHOTO ESSAY: Estrada Calls Snap Election

WEB-ONLY INTERVIEW: Jimmy Lai on feeling lucky -- and why he's committed to the island state



ASIAWEEK:

COVER: The DoCoMo generation - Japan's leading mobile phone company goes global

Bandwidth Boom: Racing to wire - how underseas cable systems may yet fall short

TAIWAN: Party intrigues add to Chen Shui-bian's woes

JAPAN: Japan's ruling party crushes a rebel ě at a cost

SINGAPORE: Singaporeans need to have more babies. But success breeds selfishness


Launch CNN's Desktop Ticker and get the latest news, delivered right on your desktop!

Today on CNN
 Search

Back to the top   © 2000 Time Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Terms under which this service is provided to you.
Read our privacy guidelines.