Died the founder of Lotte Group

In Seoul, died at the age of 98 years, the founder and honorary head of the South Korean conglomerate Lotte Group Shin Huck Ho. According to the Board of the Corporation, he died after a long illness.

Shin Huck Ho was born in 1921 during the Japanese occupation of the Korean Peninsula. In 1941 he moved to Japan where he studied chemical engineering at Waseda University. Taking the Japanese name of Takeo Shigemitsu, he in 1942, opened a company for production of rice cookers, and after the factory was bombed during an air RAID, was founded in 1948, the company is atypical for Asia, the German name of Lotte.

Of the manufacturer of chewing gum, Lotte has grown into the fifth largest industrial conglomerate in South Korea according for 2017. In December 2017 Shin Huck Ho was sentenced to four years in prison and a heavy fine on charges of embezzling company funds and other irregularities.

Then, because of ill health he was allowed to remain at liberty. Shin Huck Ho was the last of the representatives of the first generation of founders of major South Korean family-run industrial-financial groups — chaebols.