Cho Soo-ho, chairman of Hanjin Shipping Co. and the third son of the late Hanjin Group founder Cho Choong-hoon, died after a prolonged illness in Seoul Sunday, company officials said. He was 53.Cho Soo-ho, a younger brother of Cho Yang-ho, chairman of Korean Air and the Hanjin Group, is survived by his wife Choi Eun-young and two daughters.Cho Yang-ho is the eldest of the late elder Cho's four sons, with the two other sons now serving as chairman of Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction and Meritz Securities Co., respectively.
Cho Soo-ho first entered the shipping business in 1985 after working for Korean Air from the late 1970s. He became president of Hanjin Shipping Co. in 1994 and its chairman in 2003 after the death of his father the year before.Hanjin Shipping is the country's largest shipping company with the capacity to haul over 100 million tons of freight on average every year and provides container, bulk freight and logistics services. The company's assets totaled 5.1 trillion won (US$5.47 billion), with annual sales reaching US$5 billion, making it the seventh largest shipping company in the world.Hanjin has extensive office networks all over the world and operates about 100 ships.Cho was the majority shareholder of the shipping company with 6.87 percent of issued shares according the latest investor relations report, followed by 6.25 percent owned by Korean Air, the flagship company of Hanjin Group. Other key stockholders are Hanjin Transportation and Korea Airport Service.Some watchers say Cho Yang-ho has been seeking to control Hanjin Shipping through Korean Air's stake holdings, while the deceased Cho Soo-ho had reportedly attempted to transfer part or all of his stock holdings to his wife, who is a niece of Lotte Group Chairman Shin Kyuk-ho.Cho's burial is to take place on Wednesday at a Buddhist temple in Goyang west of Seoul.