By Kim Tong-hyung
Korea’s family-owned conglomerates are increasingly becoming run by scions educated at foreign schools, a new research showed Monday.
The standard procedure for members of corporate royalty has been to attend Korean universities before taking master of business administration (MBA) degrees overseas.
However, a growing number of the nation’s future business leaders are leaving to begin their secondary education in countries like the United States, Japan and European nations, online business researcher Chaebul.com said.
The owners of the country’s 30-largest business groups currently combine for 146 children, nephews and nieces over the age of 20. Of these presumably third or fourth-generation tycoons, 59, or just over 40 percent of them, are studying or have graduated from foreign universities. Twenty of them are in their 20s while another 15 are in their 30s.
The website also stated that 42 of these younger chaebol family members finished high school in Korea before moving on to foreign universities, while 17 of them were educated in foreign countries from high-school and up.
The zeal for foreign education in the founding families of chaebol has become evident over the past 10 years. Of 23 children of top-30 chaebol owners who began higher education from 2000, 20 of them enrolled at foreign universities.
In comparison, just over 32 percent of chaebol family members in their 40s are foreign educated, compared to 20 percent of those in their 50s and just over 13 percent of those in their 60s.
The owner families of SK, Lotte, Hanwha, CJ and Hyosung have been eager to send younger family members overseas, but interestingly, the scions of Hyundai Motor Group appear to prefer local universities.
Hyundai Chairman Chung Mong-koo graduated from Hanyang University and so did all his four children. His only son, Chung Eui-sun, who happens to be the firm’s vice chairman, earned an MBA at the University of San Francisco Business School after graduating from Korea University.
Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Kun-hee, the country’s most influential business figure, studied commerce at Japan’s Waseda University, while his daughter Lee Seo-hyun, executive vice president of Cheil Industries and Cheil Worldwide, graduated from the Parsons School of Design in New York.
Lee’s only son, Lee Jae-yong, now an executive of Samsung Electronics, graduated from Seoul National University and later studied at Japan’s Keio University and the Harvard Business School. Chairman Lee’s older daughter, Lee Boo-jin, president of Hotel Shilla, is a graduate of Korea’s Yonsei University.
Of the seven members of Hyosung Group Chairman Cho Suk-rae’s family, six of them, including Cho himself, were educated at foreign universities in the U.S., Japan and other countries.
Five of the six members of Lotte Chairman Shin Kyuk-ho graduated from universities in Japan, while his daughter and Lotte Shopping President Shin Young-ja graduated from Korea’s Ewha Womans University.
Hanwha Chairma Kim Seung-youn and his three children studied at foreign universities.