Comedian Seo Se-won died in Cambodia on Thursday. He was 67. The Foreign Ministry said Seo suffered cardiac arrest during treatment in a Korean-run hospital in Phnom Penh.
The cause of death is not known, but sources told Yonhap he had been suffering from diabetes.
Born in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province in 1956, Seo debuted in 1979 and appeared on many TV comedy shows in the 1980s and 1990s. His career culminated with an eponymous talk show in 1996.
He directed a movie in 1986 that flopped at the box office and took another stab at film production 15 years later with "My Wife Is a Gangster" starring Shin Eun-kyung, which became a huge hit.
But his production company was linked to a corruption scandal in the entertainment industry, forcing him to flee Korea. Seo became the target of an international manhunt after being charged with gambling overseas and returned to Korea in 2004 and was given a suspended sentence.
In 2009, Seo was again convicted of manipulating stock prices and embezzling company funds and given another suspended sentence which barred him from appearing on TV.
He then became a pastor, but was arrested in 2014 for assaulting his ex-wife Seo Jung-hee, who revealed she had been suffering from domestic violence over 30 years, and given another suspended sentence. The two tied the knot in 1982 and divorced in 2015.
Currently undergoing treatment for breast cancer, the ex-wife said news of her former husband's death was "surreal." The couple had a son and a daughter.
Seo was spotted with a traditional instrumentalist 23 years his junior, and the two married in 2016 and had a daughter. In 2020 he moved to Cambodia, where he dabbled in real estate until things went bad again, and was last seen preaching in a church there last year.
