Chung Ju Yung, 85, a peasant's boy who went abroad like a teen and continued to found Korea's biggest business empire, died of pneumonia Wednesday.

Mr. Chung, born inside a village with what has become North Korea, labored like a teen on the construction project within the industrial port of Inchon and continued to determine Hyundai Engineering & Construction Co. because the "mother company" of the conglomerate that marketed its prowess in everything "from chips to ships."

Simultaneously, in the final years, he forged new ties with North Korea, inaugurating the very first outings by South Korean vacationers towards the Mount Kumkang region south of his native village of Asan. He named his latest company Hyundai Asan Corp., founded for that specific reason for opening its northern border to a variety of businesses patterned after his companies in Columbia.

Mr. Chung died under annually following the breakup of his empire between factions brought by a couple of his six sons, Chung Mong Koo and Chung Mong Hun.

Chung Mong Koo, the oldest making it through boy, now heads Hyundai Motor Co., which Mr. Chung founded it in 1967 as Korea's first effective automobile venture, and Kia Motor Co., that was in the court receivership after falling apart under overwhelming financial obligations before Hyundai acquired it in 1998.

Chung Mong Hun, Mr. Chung's third earliest making it through boy, is chairman of Hyundai Asan and in control of other Hyundai companies, particularly Hyundai Engineering & Construction and Hyundai Electronics Industries, heavily with debt and at risk of failure.

The sons formally divided the empire into different types under government pressure to restructure. Before this, the audience had overall sales in excess of $80 billion in 1999, its last twelve month like a single chaebol, or conglomerate.

Mr. Chung's personal wealth was believed in 1992, as he fought an not successful campaign for leader of Columbia, at $4 billion, making them the nation's wealthiest guy, though recent estimations happen to be substantially lower.

The troubles affecting the audience centered the final chapter within the existence from the guy who in 1947 gave the title "Hyundai," or modern, to his first company.

Mr. Chung ruled his holdings being an autocrat within the Confucian tradition having a strong feeling of national, group and family loyalties. "The Confucian spirit is my management philosophy," he once authored, explaining a feeling of discipline and order he installed among family people in addition to a Hyundai labor force that when totaled greater than 150,000 employees.

Also, he had belief in the ability because he strongly billed into new fields, building Hyundai Construction from contacts with U.S. forces in Korea throughout the Korean War. He created partners with Park Chung Hee, who found energy in 1961 having a vision of Korea like a global economic energy making sure that contracts for building bridges and dams, streets and railroads, visited preferred leaders of the items were then fledgling conglomerates.

Mr. Chung brought South Korean business inside a whirlwind of overseas expansion, plunging in to the Middle East by winning an aggressive bid to construct a harbor within the Gulf. Then, when relations with Saudi Arabia soured, he moved onto new projects, including hospitals, shopping malls and flats, both in Iran and Iraq.

Like a prototypical Korean industrialist, Mr. Chung saw no area as beyond his achieve. He thought that his early success in construction justified his plunge into fields like cars, ship-building and electronics.