PRESS DIGEST - South Korean newspapers - Sept 3

SEOUL, Sept 3 (Reuters) - The following is a summary of major South Korean newspapers on Wednesday, prepared by Reuters in Seoul. Reuters has not checked the stories and does not guarantee their accuracy.

JOONGANG ILBO

President Lee Myung-bak will have a direct dialogue with citizens on September 9 that will be broadcast live nationwide.

CHOSUN ILBO

The government is set to allow Hwang Jang-yop, a former high-ranking North Korean official who defected to the South in 1997, to freely travel overseas. South Korea has prevented him from travelling abroad for the past ten years over worries about the impact of his activities on inter-Korea relations.

South Korea needs to speed up job creation by supporting the reconstruction and redevelopment business as the building industry has a significant impact on the lower tiers of the economy, President Lee Myung-bak said.

KOREA ECONOMIC DAILY

North Korea has expressed its intention to accept food aid if a specific civic group in South Korea offers it, a spokesman from the Unification Ministry said.

The vice president of Hyundai Heavy Industries (009540.KS), the world's largest shipbuilder, said it did not have any reason to team up with other investors to bid for Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (042660.KS) since Hyundai Heavy and its units have as much as 8.5 trillion won ($7.51 billion) in assets.

MAEIL BUSINESS NEWSPAPER

The country's science and mathematics industry has launched a bidding committee for the hosting of the 2014 International Congress of Mathematicians, which roughly 4,000 people from 100 countries will attend, the committee chairman announced.