Daewoo director working on construction of Iraq’s Al Faw port commits suicide

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - The director of the South Korean company Daewoo implementing the Al Faw port project in Iraq’s Basra Governorate has committed suicide, Iraqi authorities said on Friday.

Walid Al-Sharifi, the mayor of Al Faw district, announced the opening of an investigation into the suicide of Park il-ho, head of the Daewoo E&C office working on the project.

"The site where the body was found is near the port of Faw, ten kilometres away, and it is secured by a private company, and there are surveillance cameras,” Mr Al Sharifi told Iraqi media.

"The Korean official hanged himself with a wire, and the incident was discovered by a service worker in the company," he added.

There is currently no further information on the incident, which has prompted the company to suspend work in the port.

"The Iraqi security services arrived at the scene of the accident, and began to collect any further criminal evidence," Mr Al-Sharifi said.

This is the second death of a South Korean executive in Iraq over the past year. In 2019, the director of the company STX, which was making power stations and turbines, also committed suicide in Iraq.

Maj Gen Saad Maan, the director of the relations and information department in the Interior Ministry, said: "The Minister of Interior Othman Al-Ghanmi ordered the formation of a high-level investigation committee and sent it immediately to Basra Province to investigate the suicide of the director of the Korean Daewoo Company in the port of Faw in Basra."

The port in the south of Iraq has seen countless delays, due to financial problems. It has been over a decade since the Iraqi government first proposed the idea of the project.

The previous Iraqi government estimated the total cost to complete the construction project for the port at about $5.2 billion.