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| Jim Rogers / Korea Times file |
By Kim Jae-kyoung
Legendary investor Jim Rogers Wednesday denied media reports that he would visit Pyongyang in March to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
In an email inquiry about North Korea's invitation and his plan to travel to Pyongyang, he answered that he had not heard anything from the reclusive regime about any such meeting.
"We know nothing about it at all. No one has contacted us about the meeting. We will let you know if we know more," Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holding, told The Korea Times via email.
On Tuesday, citing sources from the ruling Democratic Party of Korea and the government, local newspaper Kyunghyang Shinmun reported that Kim invited Rogers, and the U.S. government approved the visit.
Rogers' denial is likely to come as a big disappointment for Cheong Wa Dae, which viewed the potential visit as a move to provide the impetus for the opening of the Kim Jong-un regime
The 76-year-old investor, who visited North Korea twice before as an individual tourist, has drawn keen attention in South Korea after he first expressed his intention in 2015 to invest all of his assets in North Korea. He has since been investing in South Korean venture startups.
"Once unified, it will grow faster than others and it will have a lot of dynamic things happening. You have 75 to 80 million people right on the Chinese border," Rogers said in a previous interview with The Korea Times.
"I will bet on a very exciting Korean Peninsula and may well invest most of my wealth there."
Since the beginning of 2016, the multimillionaire investor has made a total of three investments in small Korean firms.
In 2017, Rogers invested in Ulsan-based Standard Graphene, Korea's first manufacturer of graphene, a highly useful nanomaterial. In 2016, he invested in Wealth & Liberty, a promising venture startup with specialty in financial advisory services, and Illimus, a Korean cosmetics and skincare goods manufacturer.
The Singapore-based investor was appointed recently as an outside director of Ananti, which owns a large-scale resort with a golf course and an outdoor hot spring at Mount Geumgang in North Korea.
Rogers is one of the world's three most famous investors together with George Soros and Warren Buffet.
