Richest Families of Korea in 2002

By family members in a direct line, the family of Lee Kun-Hee Chairman of Samsung is reportedly the richest of all families in Korea.

According to `2002 Korea’s Richest Families` which Medias Equitables, which is an agency specialized in evaluating the stock price of companies, announced on the 24th after analyzing financial assets of listed and unlisted companies, the family of Chairman Lee allegedly own the largest property amounting at 3 trillion and 199.3 billion won.

This amount of property includes the fortune of Chairman Lee of 1 trillion and 116.7 billion won (966.3 billion won which is appraisal of stocks of listed companies like Samsung Electronics, Samsung corporation, Samsung Fire and Marine Insurance and Samsung Securities, and 150.4 billion won of unlisted companies like Samsung Everland and Samsung Life Insurance), his wife Hong Ra-Hee director of Samsung Museum of Modern Art (333.6 billion won), eldest son Lee Jae-Yong executive director of Samsung Electronics(607.3 billion won), daughter in law Yim Se-Ryung(12.9 billion won), and three daughters of Bu-Jin, Seo-Hyun and Yun-Hyung(75.8 billion won for each).

Medias Equitables said that the rest 900.9 billion won is the estimated value of port folio (bond, account, cash, art collections etc.) of Lee family.

The second richest is the family of Shin Kyuk-Ho Chairman of Lotte who owns the fortune of 2 trillion and 507.3 billion won. The appraisal of domestic stocks that Shin family own is 1 trillion and 324.1 billion won, and the appraisal of Japanese Lotte is 1 trillion and 30 billion won.

The family of Lee Myung-Hee Chairperson of Shinsegae ranked at the 3rd with the fortune of 896.7 billion won, Jung Sang-Young Kumgang Korea Chemical at 4th with 507.1 billion won.

The families ranked at 5th to 10th are the family of LG chairman Koo Ja-Kyung (485.5 billion won), Hyundai Motors chairman Chung Mong-Gu (458.2 billion won), Cheiljedang vice president Lee Jae-Hyun (400.5 billion won), SK chairman Choi Tae-Won (388.5 billion won), Pacific chairman Suh Sung-Hwan (357.8 billion won) and Hyundai Department Store Chairman Chung Mong-Keun (56.5 billion won).

And the 11th to 15th are the families of Hanjin Chairman Cho Joong-Hoon (351 billion won), NC Soft president Kim Taek-Jin (269.7 billion won), Kyobo Life Insurance chairman Shin Yong-Ho (249.3 billion won), The Hite former chairman Park Kyung-Bok (244.8 billion won) and Iljin Group Huh Chin-Kyu (227.8 billion won).

For this research, Medias Equitables introduced the research method that U.S. biweekly economic magazine Forbes, which annually announces the richest persons over 1 billion dollars, has used for last 20 years. The characteristic of this research is that the stock of unlisted companies are evaluated by the asset value, and that real estate is omitted from the research objects as people don’t own the real estate by their own names.

Considering the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Korea, which is 8 percent of U.S.’s, it targeted the families whose fortune is over 100 million dollars.

The result of this research will be given to Forbes so as to be carried on `The Billionaires` on March 18th.

sunshade@donga.com