Daewoo chairman returns home after six years in exile

The man who created the Daewoo group and fled South Korea when it collapsed in 1999 with about $70 billion in debt was arrested as he returned home yesterday, saying he was "a dying fox" seeking to make peace with the past.

Kim Woo-choong, who is 69 and said to be ailing, was once revered as the man who built Daewoo into one of the country's most powerful chaebol, or family-owned conglomerates.

Prosecutors whisked the former group chairman from the airport to their office in Seoul. They said he would most likely face fraud charges for the collapse of the business empire.

Mr Kim, dressed in a dark suit and pink tie, was surrounded by law enforcement officials even before he stepped off a plane from Vietnam at Inchon airport. Mr Kim's aides and flight attendants shielded him with pillows and blankets from South Korean camera crews who flew with him from Vietnam and mobbed the aisles trying to videotape him.

Former Daewoo employees who lost their jobs in the business group's demise gathered at the airport near Seoul carrying placards reading: "Prosecute Kim Woo-choong". A phalanx of police and prosecutors kept Kim separated from the public.

"I regret what happened and am ashamed that I did not take responsibility earlier, even though I was in charge of overseeing Daewoo's businesses," Mr Kim said in a written apology.

"I return as a failed businessman, just like a dying fox who points his head towards his hometown to resolve his past issues," he wrote, citing a Chinese proverb.

Baik Kee-seung, Daewoo's public relations executive before its collapse, told Reuters on Monday that Mr Kim had been preparing for some time to return home. Mr Baik has said Mr Kim would cooperate fully with any investigation.

South Korean authorities issued a warrant for the arrest of Mr Kim on fraud charges in March 2001.

Mr Kim was reported to be living in countries including France, Germany, the United States, Sudan and Vietnam.

Prosecutors cited Mr Kim as saying during questioning that key officers and creditors of Daewoo had pressed him to flee South Korea to avoid problems at home.

Mr Kim was hailed as one of the builders of South Korea's economy. He took an investment of a few thousand dollars to purchase a small textiles firm in 1967 and within decades turned it into the Daewoo group, one of South Korea's largest business empires that once employed more than 300,000 people.

Daewoo, a multinational giant in civil engineering, automobiles and shipbuilding, splintered into a clutch of businesses after its 1999 collapse, which was one of the largest bankruptcies in the world.

Mr Kim is suspected to have known about fraudulent accounting procedures that concealed tens of billions of dollars in losses from Daewoo's books, prosecution sources have told local media.