North Korea has agreed to allow a group of South Koreans to visit a mountain resort on its east coast this week for a memorial service for the late chairman of the country’s now-suspended tourism business partner Hyundai Group, company officials said Tuesday.

Hyundai Asan, the conglomerate’s North Korea business arm, said it received a notice from the North last Saturday that company officials may visit the Mount Geumgang resort to hold a memorial service for late Hyundai Group chairman Chung Mong-hun.

Chung, who aggressively sought joint tourism and other business projects with North Korea, committed suicide in 2003 amid an investigation into suspicions that the government of then South Korean President Kim Dae-jung secretly sent a large amount of money to North Korea ahead of the first-ever inter-Korean summit in 2000.

Chung’s ashes were scattered at the resort in accordance with his wishes.

About 10 Hyundai Asan officials, including its chief Chang Kyung-chak, plan to make a one-day trip to the resort on Friday.

Hyundai chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun, the widow of the late chairman, will not join the trip, officials said.

Seoul’s unification ministry has approved the trip.

The cross-border travel program to the scenic mountain, started by Chung’s father and Hyundai conglomerate founder Chung Ju-yung in 1998, has been suspended since the North’s 2008 shooting death of a South Korean woman tourist on the program.

During the forthcoming visit, the officials will also inspect the facilities in the travel zone before returning to the South, the company said.

The cross-border tour program had served as a major source of hard currency for the impoverished North, and Pyongyang repeatedly called for resuming the project in the first years of its suspension.

But the program has remained on hold as the North has rejected South Korea’s demand that it first punish those responsible for the shooting, promise such an incident won’t happen again and guarantee the safety of tourists before restarting the program.

In what was seen as a softening of Seoul’s demands, however, Unification Minister Yu Woo-ik said at a parliamentary meeting last week that the government can revive the project if the North simply guarantees the safety of travelers there.

On Tuesday, however, the North was negative about Yu’s comments. (Yonhap News)