Yoo Byung-eun

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According to the U.S.-based non-profit organization Evangelical Media Group created by Yoo in 2001, "he first began to live for the sake of the gospel in 1961," and that he "worked as an inventor and businessman to support the spreading of the gospel all over the world". Yoo was one of 11 students admitted to the Good News Mission Bible school established in Korea by American and English missionaries, but he was expelled. He founded what later became the Evangelical Baptist Church of Korea, also known as the Salvation Sect, in 1962 with his father-in-law, Pastor Kwon Shin-chan (권신찬; 1923–96). The church was held to be a cult by a conservative Christian denomination, the General Assembly of Presbyterian Churches, in 1992.

Yoo, while still serving as a pastor, got his start in business when acquiring the bankrupt textile company Samwoo Trading Co. (삼우무역) in 1976. He took over as CEO in 1978, and turned it into a toy manufacturing and export company. Yoo went into shipping when he founded Semo Corp. (주식회사 세모) in 1979, a holding company that came to span shipping, shipbuilding, domestic ferry businesses, electronics, real estate, cosmetics, paint, stuffed toys, pewter, and various other ventures. Semo started operating ferries on Seoul's Han River in 1986, two years before the city held the Summer Olympics.

Yoo came to public attention in connection with the Odaeyang mass suicide in 1987. Police were investigating accusations against a 48-year-old woman, Park Soon-ja, saying that she had swindled ₩8.9 billion (~US$8.7 million) from about 220 people. Odeyang Trading Co. was a firm that established by Park who used to attend Evangelical Baptist Church of Korea and Jehovah's Witnesses in the past. Yoo has denied any link to the group. On 29 August 1987 thirty-two members of the sect who believed in doomsday, including Park Soon-ja and her three children, were found dead, bound and gagged. Police assumed the event was a murder–suicide pact, and the prosecution initially suspected that Yoo was linked to the case; but he was never charged, and the police closed the case as a mass suicide. After six people, including a former follower of Park named Kim Do-hyun, surrendered to authorities on 10 July 1991, the case was reopened and found money transactions between Odaeyang Trading Co. and a member of Evangelical Baptist Church. However, the money transactions revealed that they had nothing to do with Odaeyang Trading Co. case, and private loan of Odaeyang Trading Co. Those were normal payment remittances of goods between Park and the member of Evangelical Baptist Church before establishment of Odaeyang Trading Co. Yoo was arrested and, in 1992, convicted of "habitual fraud under the mask of religion" for his role in colluding with one of his employees to collect donations from church members in the amount of ₩1.2 billion (~US$1.15 million) and invest them in his businesses. He served a 4-year prison term. In November 2014, report says Incheon District Prosecutor's Office confirm in May there was no connection between Yoo and Odaeyang incident.

By 1990, Semo Corp. had 1,800 employees, but the ferry businesses suffered maritime accidents. In 1990, 14 Semo workers were killed when their cruise ship on the Han River was hit by another ship. The company was cleared of any liability for the incident. Semo grew into the biggest ferry operator by 1994, operating 30 ships, and once had nearly 3,000 employees.

Semo Group filed for bankruptcy with more than ₩300 billion (~US$294 million) in debts amidst the 1997 Asian financial crisis, in the wake of a series of highly publicized scandals, citing business diversification as the cause of a cash shortage that had fuelled a rise in debts in its bankruptcy protection petition, and was liquidated.

After Semo's bankruptcy, Yoo's family continued to operate ferry businesses under the names of other companies, including one that eventually became Chonghaejin Marine, and grew to become the monopolistic operator of ferries linking Incheon and Jeju.

Chonghaejin Marine Company Ltd. was set up two years later on 24 February 1999, a day before a court approved the restructuring of the bankrupt Semo, and became a key entity to consolidate Semo's shipping business, taking over ships and assets held by Semo Marine, and had its debts written off.

According to Chaebul.com, an online information provider on large businesses, Yoo and his family own 30 business operators, with 13 doing business abroad such as in the U.S., Hong Kong and France. Their combined assets amount to some ₩500 billion (~US$480 million). The collective assets of the 13 overseas operations surged to ₩166.5 billion (~US$158 million) at the end of 2013. In France in 2012, Yoo made headlines prior to his photo exhibition in the Tuileries Garden at The Louvre when he through his public relations company, Ahae Press, bought the abandoned village of Courbefy for €520,000 (US$663,000, ₩767.5 million). Yoo had seen it on CNN, and wanted to set up an "environmental, artistic and cultural" project in the village. Yoo has a wide range of other business interests according to official documents and information on company websites. He owns a plantation in the United States called 123Farm, one of the largest organic lavender farms in California started in 2001 at the site of the Highland Springs Resort, a 2,400 acres (970 ha; 3.8 sq mi) property consisting of a 56-room hotel, conference center, and restaurants. Yoo was chairman of the board of the company that bought the resort in May 1990 for US$6.75 million. I-One-I Holdings subsidiary Dapanda owns 9.9 percent of the Highland Springs Conference and Training Centre at the resort, according to regulatory filings.

As an inventor, Yoo holds multiple patents, one being for a colonic irrigation system, for which he received an International Federation of Inventors' Associations' prize at the 2006 Seoul International Invention Fair. The invention is marketed in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Germany, South Korea, Philippines, and Malaysia by NaeClear, and is sold in South Korea by the company Dapanda. It "arose from the concept of Hemato-Centric Health, which revolves around the blood as being the center of life." supposedly a concept created by Yoo and his non-profit research organization Hemato-Centric Life Institute (New York) chaired by his younger son Keith H. Yoo (Yoo Hyuk-kee, 유혁기; born 1972); sponsored by NaeClear Co., Ltd. and daughter Yoo Som-na's company Moreal Design Inc., Yoo delivered keynote speeches at the 2010–13 Hemato-Centric Life Forum meetings in Seoul organized by Hemato-Centric Life Foundation.

Ahae (아해), which means "child" in old Korean language, was a nickname used in reference to Yoo in correspondence on an Evangelical Baptist Church website EBC World. Through his PR companies Ahae Press, Inc. in New York, Ahae Press France in Paris, and Ahae Press Ltd. UK in London, Yoo has exhibited and marketed himself as the photographer who goes by the name Ahae. Yoo was unknown as a photographer before 2011.

The project titled Through My Window began in early spring 2009 and continued for 4 years, during which time Yoo allegedly took about 2.7 million photographs, all through one window, which equates to a rate of roughly one photo every 60 seconds. The collection mainly consists of natural scenes shot through the window of Yoo's own studio. The location is the rural commune belonging to the Evangelical Baptist Church called "Geumsuwon" (금수원) east of Anseong south of Seoul, where Yoo lived.

Yoo first exhibited Through My Window in the Vanderbilt Hall of Grand Central Terminal, New York City, in April 2011; co-produced by daughter Yoo Som-na's company Moreal Design, it was organized by Hemato-Centric Life Institute, and sponsored by Highland Springs Resort and Bear Family Green Club. His exhibition Through My Window: Vibrancy and Serenity was on display on the same location in October 2011. Yoo did not attend the exhibition that was unveiled by his second son, Yoo Hyuk-kee, known outside South Korea as Keith H. Yoo. Keith, as CEO of Ahae Press, curated his father's exhibitions.

As a travelling exhibition, Through My Window was then on display in Europe at the National Gallery in Prague, Clarence House Gardens, Lancaster House, and Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London, Vremena Goda Galleries in Moscow, Museo Nazionale Alinari della Fotografia in Florence, and in Magazzini del Sale, Venice.

From June to August 2012, Through My Window (De ma fenêtre) was displayed in a 12,000 square feet (1,100 m2), four-story bespoke exhibition pavilion erected in the Tuileries Garden, that is administratively attached to The Louvre, in Paris. English film composer Ilan Eshkeri was commissioned to write a twelve-part tone poem. Pre-recorded in Abbey Road Studios by the London Metropolitan Orchestra the 46 minutes composition played alongside the exhibition, and was later released on Blu-ray Disc. For the gala dinner in the exhibition pavilion on 25 June 2012 Keith H. Yoo had commissioned British composer Michael Nyman to write a 26 minutes long piano quintet in four movements titled Through the Only Window. The work was subsequently recorded by Nyman Quintet in the Abbey Road Studios, and released on Nyman's record label. Hervé Barbaret, deputy to former director of The Louvre Henri Loyrette, disclosed to L'Express in 2014 that "The Louvre did not pay a penny to organize this event. The artist paid the production entirely and paid a little more than €500,000 (~US$700.000, ~₩700 million) to exhibit himself in the Tuileries". Ahae further donated €1.1 million (~US$1.5 million, ~₩1.5 billion) to the Louvre.

French magazine A nous Paris in its 25 June 2012 edition asked Keith H. Yoo the question: "The exhibition is a significant cost. Do you have any sponsors?" To which Keith answered: "No. We are funding everything with the money from our different companies. We are not interested in outside pressure and want to enjoy total freedom."

For his second solo exhibition in France, Fenêtre sur l'extraordinaire (Window on the Extraordinary), Ahae rented the Orangerie Hall of the Palace of Versailles from 25 June to 9 September 2013. To mark the end of the exhibition, Michael Nyman was again commissioned, and wrote a 32-minute symphony in four movements for the occasion, Symphony No. 6 "AHAE", representing the four seasons in nature as depicted by Ahae. French composer Nicolas Bacri was commissioned to write a 29-minute symphonic piece, his opus 130, titled "Ahae's Day (Four Images for Orchestra)". The London Symphony Orchestra was hired to premiere both pieces at L'Opéra of the Palace of Versailles in Paris on 8 September 2013. Both pieces were recorded for a planned future release. Ahae was the sole patron of the Bosquet du Théâtre d'Eau (Water Theatre Grove) (fr) currently being recreated with sculptures by Jean-Michel Othoniel in the area of the Gardens of Versailles, donating €1.4 million (~US$1.9 million, ~₩1.9 billion). Catherine Pégard, head of the Public Establishment of the Palace, Museum and National Estate of Versailles who administer the Palace of Versailles, disclosed that the exhibition was on a sponsorship basis, saying "The artist himself wanted to rent the Orangerie. But we never communicate the numbers." Spurred by investigative reporting initially published by Bernard Hasquenoph, French Le Monde and British The Times wrote that Ahae gave €5 million (~US$6.8 million, ~₩6.9 billion) to Versailles.

Financial Times in its review of the Versailles exhibition wrote:

The Economist wrote:

Parisian newspapers Le Monde and Libération, several French art magazines, as well as Korean expatriates in France in an open letter on 12 June to French Minister of Culture Aurélie Filippetti, Catherine Pégard, president of the Château de Versailles, Henri Loyrette, ex-president of the Louvre and co-president of the French-Korean Year, and Bruno Ory-Lavollé, director of the Forest Festival in Compiègne, have raised their concerns over French cultural institutions accepting self-financed exhibitions in return for donations. La Croix on 3 July wrote that French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius would write to Versailles to demand the termination of the Ahae sponsorship there.

Ahae, through his company Ahae Press, was a patron of the Forest Festival, a classical music festival in the forests of Compiègne, northern France. His photographs were to be projected during a gala concert at Théâtre Impérial de Compiègne on 4 July 2014. The sponsorship commitment was €10,000 (~US$13,640, ~₩13.9 million). Following the open letter on 12 June from Korean expatriates in France to, among others, Minister of Culture Aurélie Filippetti and the director of the Forest Festival, and subsequent talks between the festival and the Ministry of Culture, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on 30 June gave written notice to the festival suggesting the projection should be renounced "out of sensitivity and respect for the Korean people mourning [following the sinking of Sewol], in particular the families of the young victims, and in the interest of the Festival and of France"; the projection and the sponsorship was cancelled on 2 July.

An Ahae exhibition produced by Ahae Press titled Les échos du temps de près et de loin (Echos of Time: Far and Near) for the opening season of the new Philharmonie de Paris was scheduled for 5 May to 28 September 2015, and a concert sponsored by Ahae Press on 15 June 2015 in Philharmonie de Paris featuring Nyman's Symphony No. 6 "Ahae" and Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 "Pastorale" was announced; both have been cancelled.

French newspaper La Croix in a comment to the sinking of the MV Sewol wrote:

France Info commented:

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