Yoo Byung-eun

Yoo Byung-eun was a South Korean businessman, inventor, religious leader, and photographer.

He was also known by his art name Ahae.

Yoo was born in Kyoto, Japan to Korean parents on 11 February 1941.

Yoo's family returned to Korea following the liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945 and settled in Daegu, where Yoo graduated from Seonggwang High School.

He founded what later became the Evangelical Baptist Church of Korea, also known as the Salvation Sect, in 1962 with his father-in-law, Pastor Kwon Shin-chan (권신찬; 1923–96).

Yoo, while still serving as a pastor, got his start in business when acquiring the bankrupt textile company Samwoo Trading Co. (삼우무역) in 1976.

He took over as CEO in 1978, and turned it into a toy manufacturing and export company.

Yoo went into shipping when he founded Semo Corp. (주식회사 세모) in 1979, a holding company that came to span shipping, shipbuilding, domestic ferry businesses, electronics, real estate, cosmetics, paint, stuffed toys, pewter, and various other ventures.

Semo started operating ferries on Seoul's Han River in 1986, two years before the city held the Summer Olympics.

Yoo came to public attention in connection with the Odaeyang mass suicide in 1987.

Police were investigating accusations against a 48-year-old woman, Park Soon-ja, saying that she had swindled billion (~US$8.7 million) from about 220 people.

Odeyang Trading Co. was a firm that established by Park who used to attend Evangelical Baptist Church of Korea and Jehovah's Witnesses in the past.

Yoo has denied any link to the group.

On 29 August 1987, thirty-two members of the sect who believed in doomsday, including Park Soon-ja and her three children, were found dead, bound and gagged.

Police assumed the event was a murder–suicide pact, and the prosecution initially suspected that Yoo was linked to the case; but he was never charged, and the police closed the case as a mass suicide.

By 1990, Semo Corp. had 1,800 employees, but the ferry businesses suffered maritime accidents.

In 1990, 14 Semo workers were killed when their cruise ship on the Han River was hit by another ship.

The company was cleared of any liability for the incident.

After six people, including a former follower of Park named Kim Do-hyun, surrendered to authorities on 10 July 1991, the case was reopened and found money transactions between Odaeyang Trading Co. and a member of Evangelical Baptist Church.

However, the money transactions revealed that they had nothing to do with Odaeyang Trading Co. case, and private loan of Odaeyang Trading Co. Those were normal payment remittances of goods between Park and the member of Evangelical Baptist Church before establishment of Odaeyang Trading Co.

The church was held to be a cult by a conservative Christian denomination, the General Assembly of Presbyterian Churches, in 1992.

Yoo was arrested and, in 1992, convicted of "habitual fraud under the mask of religion" for his role in colluding with one of his employees to collect donations from church members in the amount of billion (~US$1.15 million) and invest them in his businesses.

He served a 4-year prison term.

Semo grew into the biggest ferry operator by 1994, operating 30 ships, and once had nearly 3,000 employees.

Yoo, who retired from his board position at Chonghaejin in 1997, was targeted in official communications prior to the conclusion of any investigation to manage public outrage and maintain government stability.

During the campaign to find and discredit Yoo, the government purposely fed several large media companies information designed to focus public interest onto the manhunt for Yoo instead of the cause of the ferry sinking.

Semo Group filed for bankruptcy with more than billion (~US$294 million) in debts amidst the 1997 Asian financial crisis, in the wake of a series of highly publicized scandals, citing business diversification as the cause of a cash shortage that had fuelled a rise in debts in its bankruptcy protection petition, and was liquidated.

After Semo's bankruptcy, Yoo's family continued to operate ferry businesses under the names of other companies, including one that eventually became Chonghaejin Marine, and grew to become the monopolistic operator of ferries linking Incheon and Jeju.

Chonghaejin Marine Company Ltd. was set up two years later on 24 February 1999, a day before a court approved the restructuring of the bankrupt Semo, and became a key entity to consolidate Semo's shipping business, taking over ships and assets held by Semo Marine, and had its debts written off.

According to Chaebul.com, an online information provider on large businesses, Yoo and his family own 30 business operators, with 13 doing business abroad such as in the U.S., Hong Kong and France.

Their combined assets amount to some billion (~US$480 million).

According to the U.S.-based non-profit organization Evangelical Media Group created by Yoo in 2001, "he first began to live for the sake of the gospel in 1961," and that he "worked as an inventor and businessman to support the spreading of the gospel all over the world".

Yoo was one of 11 students admitted to the Good News Mission Bible school established in Korea by American and English missionaries, but he was expelled.

In addition, the DSC performed illegal wiretaps, which has drawn comparisons to 2002 National Intelligence Service illegal wiretapping scandal.

After a nationwide manhunt that was broadly reported on, Yoo's body was found in an orchard, the cause of death not known.

The collective assets of the 13 overseas operations surged to billion (~US$158 million) at the end of 2013.

Yoo became the focus of Park Geun-hye's administration shortly after the sinking of MV Sewol in April 2014.

Yoo and other Korean nationals were used as scapegoats in a nation-wide propaganda campaign designed to manage public opinion after the disaster.

In official documents from the Blue House, the Defense Security Command (DSC) identified Yoo as a target to distract the public from its dissent over the Korean Coast Guard's failure to rescue passengers from the ferry.

In November 2014, report says Incheon District Prosecutor's Office confirm in May there was no connection between Yoo and Odaeyang incident.