Tag: wealth

10% of Koreans Control 66% of the Country’s Wealth

| November 7, 2015

I think the concentration of wealth that you see both in the ROK and the US has to do with crony capitalism where politicians are serving business interests more than the public at large:

rok flag

The top 10 percent of South Koreans control 66 percent of the country’s wealth, with the inequality gap becoming more acute over time, a recent report showed.

According to the report by Kim Nak-nyeon, an economics professor at Seoul’s Dongguk University, Asia’s fourth-largest economy is encumbered by a sizable difference in wealth between the haves and have-nots.

While the rich monopolized wealth that includes both financial and property holdings, the lower 50 percent only accounted for 2 percent of the country’s assets.

The scholar, who based his findings on public data released by the National Tax Service from 2000 through 2013, said the size of wealth controlled by the top 10 percent started growing in the 2000-2007 period, before the global financial crisis, with the average wealth held totaling 624 million won (US$544,500).  [Korea Times]

You can read the rest at the link.