The end of rent sharing: corporate governance reforms in South Korea

ABSTRACT

As the imprisonment of Samsung’s heir, JY Lee, clearly indicates, South Korean conglomerate groups (chaebol) face enormous difficulties in protecting their private property via father-son inheritance of the entire group. High party polarization (i.e. intense competition between ideologically divided political parties) within Korean democracy has continuously threatened the chaebols’ private property and family succession system, criticizing the unusually high economic concentration enjoyed by the top ten chaebols. Using the rent sharing view (RSV) of corporate governance, this contribution to the special issue examines key variables in the evolution of Korean corporate governance: the impact of the traditional corporate governance (TCG) and the new holding company system (HCS) on intragroup trading (IGT), non-dividend incomes hoarded by owning families, ownership-control disparity (OCD) and family succession. We find that private property protection through rent sharing continues to overshadow chaebols’ choices about their future corporate governance structure, while the new HCS fails to curb IGT, non-dividend incomes, OCD and family succession.

KEYWORDS:

• Chaebol
• corporate governance
• rent sharing
• intragroup trading
• non-dividend incomes
• ownership-control disparity
• family succession
• Samsung

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. It is probable that they structure or split the IGTs to be small enough that they can avoid the regulation threshold of 500 million won.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ingyu Oh

Ingyu Oh is Professor of Business Management and Korean and Japanese Cultural Industries at Kansai Gaidai University, Osaka, Japan. Before coming to Japan in 2018, he had taught at Korea University, Bristol Business School, Middle East Technical University, UC Berkeley, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, the University of Waikato and the University of Oregon. His main teaching and research interests include organizational studies, innovation, international business, political economy, political sociology, business history and cultural studies. He has published numerous books, monographs and journal articles over the last 25+ years. He is Associate Editor of Asia Pacific Business Review.

Soon Suk Yoon

Soon Suk Yoon is a Professor of Accounting in the School of Accounting, Finance, Economics, and Decision Sciences at Western Illinois University, USA. His teaching and research interests include financial accounting and corporate finance. He has published numerous books, and more than 50 journal articles over the last 35 years.

Hyo Jin Kim

Hyo Jin Kim is a Professor of Accounting and Tax at Jeonju University, Jeonju, Korea. Her teaching and research interests include financial accounting and tax accounting. She has published three books and more than 30 journal articles over the last 15 years.