SEOUL, - Choi Won-suk, former chairman of the now-defunct Dong-Ah Group, died of a chronic illness Wednesday. He was 80.

Choi, the son of Dong-Ah Group founder Choi Joon-moon, had helped to build the construction-focused group into the nation's 10th-biggest business conglomerate in the 1980s.

Under his leadership, the group received a series of construction projects in the Middle East, including the Great Man-Made River Project in Libya in 1983.

But the group ran into trouble in 1994 in the wake of the deadly collapse of a bridge built by the group's main construction unit.

Dong-Ah also faced serious liquidity problems in 1998, when South Korea was hit by a financial crisis.

Dong-Ah was declared bankrupt in 2001 following the bankruptcy of its major affiliate Dong-Ah Construction Industrial.

Source: Yonhap News Agency