Seoul: Former South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung's government secretly paid communist North Korea $ 100 million to get Pyongyang to agree to a historic summit in 2000 that helped Kim win the Nobel Peace Prize, an investigator said on June 25.

Independent counsel Song Doo-Hwan did not characterise the cash transfer as a payoff for the inter- Korean summit, but he said the government "aid" for communist North Korea was related to the meeting and had been sent secretly through improper channels.

Kim has admitted approving money transfers to North Korea despite "legal problems", but has said they were for the sake of peace and that his government's decision should not be subject to review.

Song had agreed not to consider whether the President himself was culpable. However, three of Kim's former aides have been arrested in the scandal.

Announcing the findings of a 70-day probe, Song said South Korea's Hyundai conglomerate sent $ 500 million to North Korea, but he called $ 400 million of that an investment by the company. The rest was sent by the government via Hyundai, he said.

All of the money was sent to Pyongyang through Hyundai subsidiaries shortly before the June 2000 summit, Kim's crowning achievement that helped him win the peace prize, Song said.

"We viewed the money Hyundai sent to North Korea as a advance business investment," Song told a nationally televised news conference. "The $ 100 million the government sent to the North through Hyundai is characterised as a politically motivated government aid."

Agencies