Former Dong-A Group Chairman Choi Won-seok, Who Led Dong-A Group's Heyday, Passes Away (Comprehensive)

Choi Won-seok, former chairman of the Dong-A Group who built Dong-A Construction into a leading construction company by successfully completing the world's largest waterway construction project, passed away on the 25th due to an illness. He was 80 years old.

He was the eldest son of Choi Jun-moon, the founder of Dong-A Group. Born in Daejeon, Chungnam, he graduated from Hanyang University with a degree in economics and later from Georgetown University in the United States.

Former Dong-A Group Chairman Choi Won-seok, who passed away on the 25th due to an illness.
[Image source=Yonhap News]

During the peak of the group, Choi led Dong-A Group, which had 22 affiliates and ranked 10th in the business world. At the age of 23 in 1966, he took office as president of Dong-A Concrete and stepped into management. In his 30s, he took charge of Dong-A Construction and Daehan Tongun, the group's core companies. In 1978, he was appointed chairman of Dong-A Group. In his 40s, he led the Libya waterway construction project, known as the "world's largest civil engineering project."

The Libya civil engineering project was a large-scale endeavor to build a water supply pipeline that delivers underground water stored in parts of the southern Sahara Desert to Mediterranean coastal cities suffering from water shortages. The total length reached 5,524 km. With the successful completion of this massive project, Dong-A Construction grew into one of the top construction companies in Korea at the time and made the name Dong-A Construction known worldwide. It is also a famous anecdote that Muammar Gaddafi, who ruled Libya at the time, treated Choi with the status of a head of state.

However, Choi stepped down from the chairman position in 1998 as management difficulties increased due to the Seongsu Bridge collapse accident in 1994 and the 1997 IMF financial crisis. Dong-A Group ultimately declared bankruptcy in 2001 due to the bankruptcy of its parent company, Dong-A Construction, and was dissolved.

Choi continued to serve as chairman of the Gongsan Academy Foundation, established in 1985, and worked to globalize the Korean Wave. Dong-A Broadcasting Arts University and Dong-A Meister High School belong to this foundation.

In June, he appeared on a YouTube channel and disclosed that he was battling a terminal illness. Reflecting on his past life, he expressed regret over the dissolution process, saying, "I am sorry (to the Dong-A Group employees)."

Since 1981, Choi had been active as a director of the Korean Sports Council and a standing member of the Korean Olympic Committee, receiving the Order of the Moran Medal for his contribution to the successful bid for the 1988 Seoul Olympics. He also received the Independence Medal of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the Gold Tower Order of Industrial Service Merit.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.