By Kim Tae-gyu
A total of five Koreans joined the trillionaire club last year to jack up the number of members of the exclusive fraternity to 14, each of whom held more than 1 trillion won worth of shares in the Seoul bourse as of the end of last December.
Chaebol.com (www.chaebul.com), a domestic consultancy, said on Sunday that SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won and LG Group Chairman Koo Bon-moo headed the new members.
Also included in the list are Shinsegae Group Vice Chairman Jung Yong-jin, NCsoft founder Kim Taek-jin and Samsung Group first lady Hong Ra-hee.
Of note is Kim of NCsoft, one of the top online game publishers here, as he became the first-ever stock trillionaire in local venture industries. Samsung, SK, LG and Shinsegae represent the nation’s unique family-owned conglomerates, or chaebol.
Samsung tycoon Lee Kun-hee, the country’s wealthiest person by any measure, and his wife Hong became the first couple to get membership of the trillionaire club.
In particular, Lee more than doubled the values of his shares from 4.11 trillion won in 2009 to 9.17 trillion won last year. Hence, the Lee-Hong couple holds more than 10 trillion won in stocks alone.
The listing of Samsung Life Insurance, Korea’s primary life insurer as a flagship unit of Samsung Group, is by and large responsible for the increased stock values of the 68-year-old.
Hyundai-Kia Automotive Group Chairman Chung Mong-koo, who topped the podium in 2009 with 4.58 trillion won, gave up the leader’s spot to his rival Lee as the former was evaluated to have 6.57 trillion won in 2010.
His younger brother Chung Mong-joon, the largest shareholder of Hyundai Heavy Industries and former head at the governing Grand National Party, saw his accounts on the Seoul bourse rise from 1.42 trillion won to 3.64 trillion won over the same period of time.
Other rich businesspeople are Hyundai Automotive’s heir apparent Chung Eui-sun, the only son of Chairman Chung, whose share values amounted to 2.13 trillion won and Lotte Group second-generation management _ Lotte Group Vice Chairman Shin Dong-bin and his elder brother Dong-joo who is in charge of the group’s Japanese unit.
Shinsegae Group Chairman Lee Myung-hee was also found to hold more than 2 trillion won worth of shares. She is the mother of group Vice Chairman Jung, who just gained membership, and is the younger sister of Samsung Chairman Lee.
The list involves various relationships such as a couple, father and son and brothers. The one thing they have in common is that all 14 trillionaires are offspring of group founders.
All of them are children or grandchildren of a handful of chaebol founders. Chaebol are sprawling conglomerates where owners’ families exert almost unchecked control of the subsidiaries despite their small direct shareholding.
The sole exception is NCsoft CEO Kim, the only entrepreneur among the trillionaires who made his wealth on his own through setting up the Seoul-based company 13 years ago.
The outfit has successfully preempted the lucrative online game market in Asia’s fourth-largest economy and has also fared well in the global market.
Chaebol.com said that the number of Koreans whose shares are worth more than 10 billion won individually amounted to 1,171 last year, up by 184 compared to 987 a year before.