After six years on the lam, former Daewoo Group tycoon Kim Woo Choong — reputedly Asia’s most notorious fugitive — returned to South Korea to “take responsibility,” he said, for a corporate scandal some likened to that country’s Enron fiasco.

Kim flew into Incheon International Airport on June 14 from Hanoi, Vietnam, on a French passport. His doctor ushered the ailing 68-year-old past a throng of reporters, police and protestors into a waiting car, which whisked him away to the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office in Seoul.

“Because of me, there has been a lot of affliction,” he told reporters. “I have come back to take responsibility for what happened at Daewoo Group.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, adding that he was “very sick.”

Kim fled the country in 1999 — shortly after Daewoo declared bankruptcy, $80 billion in the red. After Kim’s sudden departure, investigators uncovered a $20 billion overseas slush fund, allegedly earmarked for political bribes.

At the height of Daewoo’s success, Kim was considered a national figurehead for South Korea’s meteoric economic ascent. The $60 billion Korean conglomerate (chaebol) once boasted 200,000 employees on its payroll, with factories in Vietnam, Poland and India producing cars, ships, microwaves and television sets.

Some think the government should pardon the ailing Kim, as it dismissed the charges of some of his subordinate executives. Others think he deserves the full force of any punishment coming his way.

But one thing is for certain: The fall from grace was a long and bitter one for the man who asserted in his autobiography, Every Street is Paved with Gold, “You should never lose your reputation. You should treasure it as dearly as life.”