A businessman, whose family’s company was handling a ferry that sank off South Korea in 2014, claiming lives of more than 300 people, will be going to Seoul from the United States to face theft fine, officials said on Thursday, after years of requests from South Korean prosecutors. The businessman, Yoo Hyuk-kee, 50, also recognized as Keith Yoo, is tentatively going to come in South Korea on Friday, where he encounters trial on seven counts of theft. Since 2020, he had been held without bond in New York State, where he stayed for years.
South Korea’s Justice Ministry revealed in a statement on Thursday that Yoo would be coming at Incheon International Airport on Friday at 5.20am local time (4.20am Singapore time). A company handled by Yoo’s family, Chonghaejin Marine, enforced the Sewol ferry. It overturned the south-western coast of South Korea in April 2014. Most of those who lost their lives were teenagers on a school trip, and the disaster came as a shock to the nation. In the month of February, in 2020, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York got an arrest warrant and a certification that Yoo was deported under a treaty between the two nations, the files reveal.