Temporary Shutdown of the Asia-Pacific Foundation

The Asia and Pacific Peace Foundation held an emergency executives meeting in April 18, and decided to suspend its activities until the end of tenure of the president Kim Dae-Jung.

An executive of the foundation, Rep. Sul Hoon of the Millennium Democratic Party (MDP), said, `We are going to downsize the organizational structure of the foundation drastically due to the financial difficulties, thus only leaving four or five residential employees from the current 25 employees.`

He added, `We have so far managed the foundation with loans of two billion Won for the construction of the foundation building and one billion Won for operating expenses, but we are now unable to pay even the salaries of the employees since the contributions stopped coming as the foundation sucked in the recent political whirlwind,` and, `We decided to continue only nominal activities till the president retires from his office.`

He made it clear that the position of vice chairmanship of Kim Hong-Up, the second son of the president Kim will not change, saying, `The line-up of current executive members will not change.`

In other story, former supreme party member Kwon Noh-Kap, who is a close associate of the president Kim declared that he would close-off Mapo office opened in March last year within the month.

Former supreme party member Kwon is scheduled to visit the U.S., China, and Japan for two months beginning from early May.

Young-Chan Yoon yyc11@donga.com · Yong-Gwan Jung yongari@donga.com