CHUNG MONG HUN gave no sign that he was intending to kill himself. The night before his death, the chairman of the Hyundai Asan conglomerate dined with his family. Afterwards he went out with an old school friend.
They got through two bottles of wine before saying goodnight. Then, just before midnight on Sunday, Mr Chung, 55, entered the Seoul headquarters of Hyundai Asan. It was the last time that anyone saw him alive.
Yesterday a caretaker poked what he thought was a drunken tramp in a flowerbed. It was the body of the chairman, 12 floors below his open office window. On his desk were scrawled notes: “I was a foolish man and I have finally done a foolish thing. Please forgive my foolish deed.”
Within hours South Korean websites were thrumming with speculation about what had killed Mr Chung, although, for now, there seems to be no reason to doubt that his death was suicide. Nevertheless, the consequences will be far- reaching. Mr Chung was at the centre of the country’s hottest scandal, concerning the summit in 2000 between Kim Dae Jung, then the South Korean President, and Kim Jong Il, the North Korean dictator. The meeting was regarded as a success and won Kim Dae Jung the Nobel Peace Prize.
Yet this year the achievement has been tarnished by the allegation that North Korea was paid $500 million (£312 million) for the summit, money funnelled through Mr Chung’s company. He was charged with violating foreign currency laws; the day before his death, he was interrogated for 12 hours. Conviction could have brought a three-year jail sentence.
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Yet perhaps any penalty was less important than the humiliation. Hyundai was founded as a repair shop by Mr Chung’s father, a docker who became the most powerful businessman in South Korea, running the world’s largest shipbuilder and diversifying into cars, electronics and financial services.
Like the other South Korean chaebol (conglomerates), the Hyundai companies were split up after the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Chung Mong Hun inherited Hyundai Asan. He also inherited his father’s most cherished dream: the reunification with the communist North.
After the 2000 summit Hyundai Asan led the way in investment in North Korea. It ran loss-making tours to the North’s Diamond Mountains and invested in an industrial park for the city of Kaesong. The company always claimed that $400 million of the money that it sent north before the summit was for legitimate business, but that still left $100 million unexplained.
Mr Chung was said to have been deeply upset by the way that an idealistic enterprise has been tarnished by scandal and by his failure to realise his father’s ambitions. His death may complicate the prosecution of other powerful men implicated in the scandal. It may also lead to further restructuring of the Hyundai companies.
Mr Chung’s last wish was that business in the North should go on. Last night, however, North Korea expressed condolences over his death but added that it would suspend a joint tourism project with South Korea.