Second son of Sewol ferry owner seized in NY

Yoo Hyuk-kee /Yonhap

By Bahk Eun-ji

Yoo Hyuk-kee, the second son of Semo Group's late former chairman Yoo Byung-eun, was arrested on an extradition warrant at his home in the United States, the New York Times reported Friday.

Korean prosecutors had requested the warrant for Yoo who has been charged with embezzlement here. A U.S. Justice Department spokeswoman said the arrest came in response to the extradition request.

Yoo was the only child among the senior Yoo Byung-eun's two sons and two daughters whose whereabouts the prosecution here had failed to ascertain.

He is considered to be one of the key people in the scandal surrounding the sinking of the Sewol ferry in 2014 that killed more than 300 people, most of whom were high school students. Yoo Hyuk-kee was also reportedly the de facto heir to the Semo Group and its subsidiaries under the late Chairman Yoo, who was the controlling shareholder of Chonghajin Marine, the “paper” operator of the Sewol.

Yoo and other family members have been accused of embezzling $169 million from a church that his father founded and allegedly used the money to found various companies, including the marine shipping firm, which was then operated with the church funds.

The embezzlement allegedly help create unsafe conditions on the ship, as the family diverted money supposed to have been spent on implementing safety measures, according to Korean prosecutors.

The prosecution also said the ferry operator routinely overloaded its ships, including the Sewol, to help make up for the losses incurred by the embezzlement. On its last journey, the Sewol was carrying twice as much cargo as it was allowed to, and had unapproved alterations to its superstructure that moved its center of gravity upward, making it inherently unstable.

“Yoo was accused of conspiring with chief executives of the companies controlled by his family to defraud the businesses of $23 million through sham contracts such as fraudulent trademark licensing and business consulting agreements?,” Derek Wikstrom, an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, was quoted as saying by the New York Times.

In July 2014 the senior Yoo was found dead in an apparent suicide. His eldest son Dae-kyun was sentenced to two years in prison for embezzlement and other charges, while the eldest daughter, Sum-na, who is also suspected of embezzlement, was extradited from France in 2017 after three years on the run there.