This article was displayed on the ChosunBiz RM Report website at 2:12 p.m. on Jan. 5, 2026.
Value Invest Korea (VIK), led by former CEO Lee Cheol, who is serving time for a 700 billion won financial fraud, has finally gone bankrupt. Identified as the de facto core of the fraud case, VIK had pursued corporate rehabilitation from 2020, after Lee's prison sentence was finalized, but met a disastrous end after failing to properly carry out its repayment plan for five years. Practical recovery for tens of thousands of investment victims has effectively fallen through.
According to legal sources on the 5th, the Seoul Bankruptcy Court's Division 2 declared VIK bankrupt on the 30th of last month. VIK is known as the key corporation in a large-scale Ponzi scheme (financial pyramid) in which Lee, over four years from 2011, illegally raised 700 billion won from more than 30,000 investors by masquerading as so-called "crowdfunding" without authorization from financial authorities.
The bankruptcy follows the termination of VIK's rehabilitation proceedings on the 15th of last month. On Apr. 24, 2020, VIK applied to the court for corporate rehabilitation (court receivership), saying the corporate value exceeded the liquidation value and that it would sell held assets to repay debt. At the time, investment victims objected, calling it a "face-saving rehabilitation filing" aimed at avoiding asset collection by using the court's comprehensive injunction, but the court approved the commencement of rehabilitation proceedings on Aug. 4 of the same year.
The problem is that after the rehabilitation proceedings began, VIK failed to carry out the repayment plan it promised the court.
According to the court's decision to terminate rehabilitation proceedings obtained by ChosunBiz, the amount of general rehabilitation claims to be returned to investment victims and others initially exceeded 63.8 billion won. VIK repaid all priority claims such as public-interest claims, but for general rehabilitation claims it repaid only about 35.6 billion won in total: ▲ 5.11 billion won in 2021 ▲ 10.34 billion won in 2022 ▲ 4.82 billion won in 2023 ▲ 2 billion won in 2024 ▲ 13.27 billion won in 2025.
Although the overall repayment rate, including public-interest claims, was in the 60% range, the repayment rate for general rehabilitation claims was only 55.7%. The court took issue with the fact that more than 28.2 billion won remained unpaid even though the four-year rehabilitation plan period had already passed.
The court also found that even if VIK sold all of its niches at Sian Memorial Park and its equity in Yap Company, the value of assets that could be converted into cash in the short term was at most 16.6 billion won, far too little to cover the remaining rehabilitation claims.
The panel said, "The debtor's repayment rate for general rehabilitation claims does not even reach 60%, and without active business operations, the company's business purpose is limited to the realization (conversion to cash) of held investment assets on the premise of liquidation," adding, "Not only is the maximum estimated amount of future realizable value of held investment assets only about half of the unpaid rehabilitation claim amount, it is also difficult to expect realization of a meaningful amount within a foreseeable time frame, making it hard to fully perform the rehabilitation plan."
It then decided to terminate the rehabilitation proceedings, citing VIK's slim prospects for rehabilitation given the continued fixed expenses such as salaries and rent and the administrator's inability to present other self-rescue plans.
Accordingly, the court will accept claim filings until Feb. 13 and hold a creditors' meeting on Mar. 25. At that meeting, the bankruptcy trustee to be appointed is expected to discuss specific methods to sell remaining assets and the final distribution procedures for victims.
Meanwhile, VIK's former CEO Lee was indicted in 2015 on charges including violations of the Financial Investment Services and Capital Markets Act and received a finalized 12-year prison sentence from the Supreme Court in 2019. During a period when Lee was released on bail in the middle of the trial in 2016, Lee was indicted again on charges of additionally and illegally raising more than 60 billion won in investment funds, and in 2021 the Supreme Court finalized an additional prison term of two years and six months. As a result, the total sentence amounts to 14 years and six months.
Lee also drew attention as a central figure in the so-called "prosecutor-media collusion" allegations, claiming to have been subjected to coercive reporting by a former Channel A reporter in the so-called "Channel A case" that surfaced during the Moon Jae-in administration.