Common ground between enemies
While North Korea’s family dynasty is by far the more infamous, South Korea’s own ruling dynasties have also wielded influence for decades.
The two Koreas share a language, a culture and the world’s most heavily armed border.
Something else South Korea and North Korea have in common is that both are ruled either formally or informally by family dynasties which, for better or worse, have had a profound influence on the lives of tens of millions of Koreans and billions of foreigners.
Three generations of the Kims have had an audacious 60- year run as North Korea’s uncrowned, oddball royal family. South Korea’s dynasties have had an outsized influence since the end of the Japanese occupation, too. One difference is that there are several dozen families calling the shots in the South, not one. Another is that while the clans in the South wield immense power, they are seldom formally involved in politics like the Kims, but monopolize the country at a slight remove through massive industrial conglomerates known as chaebols.
That a few families exercise outsized influence over a country is hardly a phenomenon unique to the Koreas. The royal houses of Britain, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates are obvious examples of this. So are the Rothschilds of Austria, France, Britain and Italy, old American dynasties such as the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Mellons, Fords and du Ponts, and newish ones such as the Waltons and Murdochs. Then there are the Kennedys and the Bushes, China’s so- called “princelings” who are constantly embarrassing their parents, the Gandhis and the Bhuttos, Filipino families such as the Marcoses and Aquinos as well as Syria’s Assads.
But it is hard to beat the Koreas’ super- families for the sheer breadth and scale of their activities and ambitions and, in the case of the North’s Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un, their outrageous, but somehow carefully calibrated megalomania as demonstrated by their wacky nuclear brinkmanship on behalf of a country that is one of the poorest, most backward places on Earth.
Forbes Asia published a fascinating wealth list for South Korea this month. The four richest families in South Korea — the Lees, led by Lee Kun- Hee and the Chungs, led by Chung Mong- Koo — are estimated to be worth more than $ 30 billion US through their ownership of the Samsung and Hyundai chaebols while other branches of their families often led by daughters and granddaughters control assets worth billions of dollars. There are other billiondollar family companies, too, such as LG Electronics and the Lotte retail chain that is now expanding across Asia.
Most dynasties begin to falter after a couple of generations
because they have either drawn talent from a tiny gene pool for too long, have begun to suffer because of group think or because they have children who contribute nothing while squandering their inheritances. However, there is little evidence of this happening yet in either of the Koreas.
Kim Jong Un may look like a goofy school kid but he is believed to have ruthlessly consolidated his power in the North recently by firing and demoting lots of his generals. The young tyrant has also continued the curious family business of getting global attention by threatening nuclear war and by testing nuclear weapons.
Rather than faltering, the families that hold sway in the South, now led by the children and grandchildren of the founders, have dramatically grown their businesses over the past 20 years. Samsung has moved far beyond its cheap, low- quality manufacturing beginnings, establishing itself in this century as a global brand producing high- quality, leading- edge electronics products. Hyundai
has hugely improved the reputation of its cars while becoming the world’s fourth largest automobile manufacturer. At the same time one of its many sister companies has become the world’s largest shipbuilder.
Other than an example of what can be achieved through zeal and hard work, there are no real lessons in this for those who live beyond the Korean Peninsula. No country wants anything to do with North Korea and its nuclear ravings, gulags and famines, or with the bizarre cult of personality that surrounds the dynastic Kims.
South Korea’s family- run chaebols have been fantastically successful and can be much admired from afar. But they are so big they have the economy in a stranglehold, have inevitably stifled competition, and have been hounded by persistent claims that backhanders and slush funds have been used for influence- peddling.
What is most remarkable about the vastly different dynasties of the two Koreas is their extraordinary staying power.