Choi Won-suk, the former chairman of Dongah Group, died on Wednesday from a chronic illness. He was 80.
Dongah became famous for building a 4,000-km water pipeline in Libya that propelled the construction firm among Korea's top 10 conglomerates but went bankrupt after the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
Choi also made headlines for his frequent marriages to glamorous women.
The first son of the company's founder, Choi graduated from Hanyang University with a bachelor's degree in economics and then studied at Georgetown University before joining the company in the early 1960s.
The group swiftly grew by acquiring a series of companies in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But it was by landing the US$3.3 billion Libyan contract in the 1980s that Choi made his name. That was equivalent to a quarter of Korea's annual fiscal budget at the time.
In 1989, Choi won another $5.3 billion order for a huge aqueduct in Libya, which was the biggest single order won buy a Korean builder at the time.
But Dongah Group started going downhill following the collapse of Seongsu Bridge in Seoul in 1994. Shoddy construction was revealed as the cause of the disaster, damaging the builder's credibility. Choi was also mired in a slush fund scandal involving then-President Roh Tae-woo.
After investing over W1 trillion in development projects in Incheon that soured in the Asian financial crisis, Choi's personal wealth and the company's fortunes went rapidly down the drain, and Dongah went bankrupt in 2001 (US$1=W1,350).
Choi's first wife was former Miss Korea Shin Jung-hyun. His second wife was actress Kim Hye-jung, his third Pearl Sisters singer Bae In-soon, and his fourth former TV presenter Chang Eun-young. They too divorced in 2010.
A memorial altar has been set up at Asan Medical Center in Seoul and Choi will be laid to rest on Saturday.
