Founder of South Korea’s Lotte business dynasty dies at 97

Shin Kyuk-ho built Lotte into the nation’s fifth-largest chaebol by assets, a group of 95 companies in businesses from department stores to petrochemicals and the Lotte Giants baseball team in the southeastern city of Busan. - Reuters

SEOUL: Shin Kyuk-ho, a wartime migrant to Japan who returned home to build a little-known chewing-gum maker into Lotte Group, South Korea’s biggest retailer, has died. He was 97.

Shin had been hospitalised in Seoul to get medical treatment for various age-related symptoms and passed away Sunday at 4.29pm, Lotte Group said in a statement.