Two-thirds of Korea's fourth- and fifth-generation chaebol heirs enrolled abroad as undergraduates

The four generational counts in CEO Score's survey (34, 112, 155 and 49) add to exactly 350, so every family member in the sample sits in one bucket ^[1][17]. The bucket behind the headline holds 14% of them ^[18]. Each heir in it moves the share by about two percentage points ^[19].

The larger move is in age. Foreign undergraduate enrolment covers 67.3% of the whole fourth- and fifth-generation cohort ^[21]. The generation of Jay Y. Lee and Euisun Chung took the older route. Lee studied East Asian history at Seoul National University, and Chung studied business administration at Korea University before an MBA at the University of San Francisco ^[9]. The survey report names two families that clustered at one foreign school, and in both the shared school was a graduate program. Four fourth-generation GS members, now chief executives of GS Entec, GS Futures, GS Caltex and GS Retail, all hold Stanford MBAs ^[10]. Five Doosan family members, including former chairman Park Yong-sung, took MBAs at New York University ^[11].

The direction was visible 15 years ago. The 2011 Chaebul.com survey found that 40.4% of the 146 family members it covered had attended a foreign university ^[14]. Its post-2000 entrants sat 6.9 points below today's fourth- and fifth-generation share ^[25].

For this cohort, the families have mostly stopped paying for a Korean first degree. At most 16 of the 49 could have taken one ^[22]. The home tallies (54 for Korea University, 50 for Seoul National, 35 for Yonsei) span every generation ^[8]. The foreign tallies also mix degree levels: Columbia's 22 include Lotte chairman Shin Dong-bin's MBA and CJ heir Lee Sun-ho's financial economics degree ^[12].

One reading is that foreign undergraduate schooling changes how heirs run their groups, in who sits on the board and where the group invests abroad. Another is that a degree is a credential, and decisions follow the family's control of the group whichever school issued it. A third is that 49 people are too few to tell those apart. Neither survey measures how any group is governed, so the governance question cannot be settled from them.

I think the credential reading fits the record better for now. Most of the third generation had already studied abroad ^[5]. If a foreign classroom changed how groups are run, the effect should already show among current leaders, or rather among the nearest comparison, the four GS chief executives who share a Stanford MBA ^[10]. The timing thesis would gain support if heirs with foreign first degrees run their units differently from heirs who went abroad only for graduate school, once both hold the same posts.