Founder of now-defunct Kukje Group dies at 79

SEOUL, March 29 (Yonhap) -- Yang Chung-mo, founder of South Korea's once-large business conglomerate Kukje Group, died of pneumonia Sunday, his family and hospital officials said. He was 79.

Yang died Sunday afternoon at Seoul National University Hospital in downtown
Seoul after a long battle with the disease, according to the hospital.
Yang set up Kukje in 1947 as a small maker of rubber shoes and helped the company
grow as the nation's seventh-largest conglomerate in the 1980s, with its business
interests ranging from steel, machinery, textile to securities.
But the group's fortunes turned bleak in early 1985 after Yang allegedly donated
a paltry sum of political donation to then South Korean president Chun Doo-hwan,
who seized power through a 1979 coup, according to many newspaper articles.
At that time, Chun was reportedly disappointed at the amount of political funds
donated by Yang.
In February 1985, the then-government-controlled Korea First Bank, the main
creditor of Kukje, refused to extend loans to the financially weak conglomerate,
forcing it to be liquidated.
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