Wealth Of Korea's 50 Richest On Forbes List Falls 14% To US$99 Billion
SINGAPORE (April 15, 2025) – Impacted by both South Korea's biggest political crisis in decades and the recent U.S. tariff shock, the country's benchmark Kospi index declined 15% since fortunes were last measured 12 months ago. As a result, the collective net worth of Korea's 50 Richest on the 2025 Forbes list fell to US$99 billion from $115 billion last year. The complete list can be found here, as well as in the April/May issue of Forbes Asia and the May issue of Forbes Korea.
The wealth of 32 listees declined, including that of private equity maven Michael Kim, who reclaimed the No. 1 position after a year's gap, despite a slight drop in his net worth to $9.5 billion. Kim's MBK Partners was in the spotlight after its debt-laden Homeplus hypermarket chain ran into financial trouble.
Jay Y. Lee, executive chairman of Samsung Electronics, saw his wealth decline by $3.7 billion to $7.8 billion. He slipped to second place from being the richest last year. The company was slow to ride the AI boom, making it one of the laggards among tech stocks.
The biggest gainer in dollar terms this year was Meritz Financial Group chairman Cho Jung-ho, whose fortune shot up by $1.5 billion to $7.7 billion, climbing one spot to become the country's third-richest person. The financial heavyweight reported record net profit of 2.3 trillion won in 2024, following the merger of its insurance and securities units.
Seo Jung-jin of Celltrion takes the fourth spot on the list with $6.3 billion, as his net worth fell $1.2 billion from $7.5 billion last year. Rounding out the top five is Mong-Koo Chung of Hyundai Motor, who also saw his wealth fall $$700 million to $3.9 billion this year.
Another fortune to take a hit was that of Kwak Dong Shin (No. 22), Hanmi Semiconductor's chairman and CEO, whose wealth plunged by more than two-thirds to $1.25 billion. Shares of the semiconductor packaging equipment maker more than halved from a year ago as revenue growth lost steam.
The biggest gainer in percentage terms was Park Soon-jae (No. 14), cofounder and CEO of biotech firm Alteogen, whose wealth got a 68% boost to $2.4 billion after it signed a clutch of lucrative licensing deals. In March, it inked two deals worth $1.4 billion with pharma giant AstraZeneca to use its enzyme technology to develop subcutaneous cancer drugs.
There are three newcomers on this year's list: Kim Jung-soo & Chun In-jang (No. 21, $1.3 billion), the couple behind Samyang Foods, who got a lift from buoyant overseas sales of its spicy Buldak noodles; Jung Sung-jae (No. 43, $760 million), founder of medical aesthetic device firm Classys, which saw its shares surge 50% thanks to the growing K-beauty craze; and Kim Hyung-tae (No. 46, $725 million), founder of online games developer Shift Up, who joins the ranks after raising $320 million in what was South Korea's second-largest listing last year.
Four listees returned to the ranks after previously dropping off, including Lee Hwa-kyung (No. 44, $745 million), who owns a stake in Orion Holdings, the parent outfit of the confectionery and foods group founded by her late father, Lee Yang-gu.
Seven from last year did not make the cut, including former billionaire Ryu Kwang-ji, whose chemicals and EV battery maker Kumyang was roiled by slowing EV sales. The minimum net worth to make the list fell to $665 million from $775 million last year.
The top 10 richest in Korea are:
This list was compiled using shareholding and financial information obtained from the families and individuals, stock exchanges, annual reports, analysts, government agencies and other sources. Net worths were based on stock prices and exchange rates as of the close of markets on April 7, 2025 and private companies were valued based on similar companies that are publicly traded. Real-time net worths on Forbes.com may reflect different valuations. The ranking lists both individual and family fortunes, including those shared among relatives and may differ from the World's Billionaires List, which includes individual fortunes with net worths as of March 7. The list can also include foreign citizens with business, residential or other ties to the country, or citizens who do not reside in the country but have significant business or other ties to the country.
For more information, visit www.forbes.com/korea
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At UW–Madison, Faulkner took a course about computing in medicine that was taught by a pioneering physician, Dr. Warner Slack, one of the first people to recognize the promise of the technology within health care. Faulkner began working with Slack and his team, and she was tasked with developing a system that could keep track of patient information over time. She eventually built what would become the kernel for Epic, though it took years of urging from potential users before she would actually launch the company in 1979. In the interim, she taught college-level computer science. When Faulkner finally opened Epic for business, she did so with a small amount of cash from some colleagues at an initial valuation of $70,000. Now the company is worth many billions of dollars, though estimates of its valuation differ. Some of the original shareholders eventually sold their stock back to the company. "They got very good returns," Faulkner wrote in a testimonial. 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She's equally opposed to selling the business, which she makes clear in the company's second commandment. That hasn't stopped other executives from trying to change her mind. In 2017, at the Digital Healthcare Innovation Summit in Boston, former General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt revealed that he'd spoken with Faulkner about acquiring Epic. Faulkner shut him down immediately. "It was a five-minute meeting — perhaps the shortest in history," Immelt said, according to a report from Healthcare IT News. The report said he'd also considered buying Cerner. Faulkner confirmed the encounter with CNBC. "Others have asked to come and persuade us, and I've heard our staff say to them, 'Just leave your car running,'" she said. Faulkner has said in testimonials that she's avoided buyers in order to remain independent and preserve Epic's unique culture, and she doesn't make acquisitions, calling them a distraction. But no matter how much she loves her company and her job, at some point, somebody else is going to have to run Epic. Faulkner has remained mum about who will be her eventual successor, other than to say that the person will have to be a software developer and a longtime Epic employee. The obvious choice, according to 10 former Epic employees who spoke with CNBC, is Sumit Rana, who was named president of the company last August. The 49-year-old joined Epic right out of college in 1998 and helped build the company's patient portal called MyChart. Rana, who was a toddler when Faulkner founded Epic, has been participating in more high-profile speaking engagements of late, including representing the company during the opening panel at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' Quality Conference in July. Faulkner declined to say whether Rana is the top contender for the job. "That's the company's business," she said. "Sumit is a wonderful employee, and he would make a good CEO, but we're not publicly announcing anything." While Faulkner doesn't say much about the company's succession plans, she hasn't been shy about her plans for her personal wealth. In 2015, she signed The Giving Pledge and agreed to donate 99% of her assets to charity, a decision that was inspired in part by a dinner she had with Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett that year. Buffett created The Giving Pledge with Bill Gates and Gates' then wife, Melinda French Gates, in 2010, encouraging the world's richest people to give away the majority of their wealth. Following Faulkner's pledge, she launched a family foundation called Roots & Wings with her husband in 2020. Roots & Wings provides grants to nonprofits that support low-income children and families. Faulkner's daughter, Shana Dall'Osto, serves as executive director of the organization. Faulkner has been selling her nonvoting shares back to the company, giving the proceeds directly to Roots & Wings. "I've never cashed a single share for myself," Faulkner told CNBC. Installing an EHR is an extremely complicated and costly project for health systems. If it doesn't go well, it could "blow up" the whole business, Dr. Robert Grossman, CEO of NYU Langone Health, told CNBC in an interview. "We bet the ranch on Epic, let's be very honest," he said. Fans of Epic say the company is fully tuned in to its customers' needs. "They don't just operate and dial in," said Michael Mayo, CEO of Baptist Health in northeast Florida. "They visit our campus. They're immersed here. They know our teams across our IT [information technology] component and our caregivers. They are in our facilities. And when we went live, which is a pretty scary time, they were in full force here." Each health system that uses Epic has a point person called a "BFF," or "best friend forever," who is available to answer questions and help solve problems. Epic doesn't outsource any incoming calls to third parties, the company says, so staff members are responsible for picking up the phone 24/7. Faulkner also makes herself easily accessible to customers, executives said. Mike Slubowski, CEO of Trinity Health, which operates 93 hospitals across 26 states, said Faulkner always answers his emails within the day, if not the hour. She holds recurring meetings with senior health-care executives by phone or video call to answer questions and talk through an organization's specific needs and ideas. Executives told CNBC that Faulkner takes copious notes and is receptive to feedback. If she doesn't have an answer, she promptly calls someone who does. "She'll stop right there and say, 'Get so-and-so on the phone,'" said Dickson, of UMass Memorial Health. "I don't know what so-and-so was doing prior to getting the call, but it's clear that when Judy calls, you drop what you're doing." Pete Durlach, corporate vice president for health and life sciences at Microsoft, said he's been in meetings with Epic staffers who have gotten these impromptu calls. Microsoft and Epic have been close partners for around two decades, a relationship that's gotten tighter as cloud and artificial intelligence technologies have advanced, he said. "People definitely answer the phone when Judy calls," Durlach said. Epic doesn't advertise or have a traditional marketing department; the company has relied heavily on word of mouth. Faulkner has also proven to be an effective salesperson. Ardent Health CEO Marty Bonick said that when he was debating whether to convert some of his hospitals to using Epic products, Faulkner ultimately helped sway him. Ardent Health owns 30 hospitals and 280 outpatient care sites across six states. When Bonick joined Ardent in 2020, he said, roughly two-thirds of Ardent's hospitals were using Epic. Bonick said he'd never worked with Epic and wanted to make sure that switching over the remainder of Ardent's hospitals would be worthwhile. Bonick said he told Faulkner that he'd heard Epic's product was expensive and difficult to implement. "She came back with a presentation that she delivered personally, and spent probably over 90 minutes," said Bonick, who was ultimately sold on the conversion. "I had to say, 'OK, time out. I've got another meeting to go to,' but she really was not watching the clock." Epic is used by all 20 of the top hospitals from the U.S. News & World Report rankings, and by the country's seven largest health plans, according to the company. Its dominance has come with plenty of controversy. Epic faces accusations of anticompetitive practices in two lawsuits from the past year. One was filed in September by data startup Particle Health, which alleges that Epic has used its EHR market power to "snuff out" competition in other emerging health-care markets. Epic said in response it would "vigorously defend itself against Particle's meritless claims." The second lawsuit was filed in May by CureIS Healthcare, a managed care services company that claims Epic has engaged in a "multi-prong scheme to destroy" CureIS' business. CureIS alleges Epic has interfered with its customer relationships, blocked access to necessary data and raised unfounded security concerns, according to a complaint. An Epic spokesperson told CNBC at the time of the filing that the company "believes in free and fair competition, and we also believe our customers are in the best position to choose the right solutions to meet their needs — whether with Epic or by adopting other products and services." Epic's competitors have also long accused the company of being territorial over its data and impeding efforts to share patient information between vendors. In a blog post last year, Oracle Executive Vice President Ken Glueck wrote that "everyone in the industry understands that Epic's CEO Judy Faulkner is the single biggest obstacle to EHR interoperability." Interoperability, in this case, refers to the exchange of electronic health data from one health-care organization to another. Since health data is siloed, stored across dozens of formats and protected by federal laws such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, it's a complex undertaking. Over the years, startups such as Practice Fusion and DrChrono have tried to crack the EHR market with promises of greater openness and more user-friendly products, but they have never become more than niche offerings. Some failed completely. Epic promotes its own interoperability tools such as Care Everywhere and EpicCare Link, which allows customers and their affiliates to exchange data with one another. Epic also participates in larger data exchange networks. One of Epic's biggest feats in its 46 years is managing to attract high-level tech talent far away from the nation's engineering and business hubs, especially given the harsh Midwestern winters in Wisconsin. That's where Epic's headquarters comes into play. It's a campus that industry executives and former employees likened to a techie's Disney World. All 28 office buildings are themed. They're clustered into mini-campuses, with names such as Prairie Campus, Wizards Academy Campus and Storybook Campus. The offices are designed by architecture firm Cuningham, which has also worked on projects at Disney theme parks all over the world. John Cuningham, the founder of the firm, said he's worked with Faulkner for 30 years, and that she's always been very involved in the process. Epic's first campus, for instance, has more than 80 bathrooms, and Faulkner wanted to know the details of all of them. "Each one," he said. "Light fixtures, faucets, mirrors, wallpaper, tile, sinks. I mean, I was thinking, 'Oh, she'll last for 10.' She did all 85, and she still does that," he said. On Epic's grounds, a metal wizard stands in the courtyard of a castle, giant chocolate chips mark the entryway to a faux chocolate factory, and a hanging bridge leads to the company's very own treehouse. Inside a building inspired by "Alice in Wonderland," there's a slide that takes employees into a small room where everything is upside down. It's popular with visitors. "I was kind of blown away," Warner Thomas, CEO of Sutter Health, a nonprofit health system in Northern California, told CNBC about his first trip to Epic's campus. "I went down the slide, like everybody." The buildings are brimming with trinkets, ceramics, mosaics and paintings that Epic employees get to help source. Faulkner recruits a small group of volunteers to go with her to local art fairs and buy decorations for the campus. Some pieces cost thousands of dollars, according to former employees. Faulkner said she had just returned from an art fair ahead of her interview with CNBC. Despite the fantastical themes on-site, employees are tasked with very real responsibilities. Since Faulkner places such a strong emphasis on supporting her customers, she holds her staff to high standards. Most employees work in person five days a week. Hours can be long and burnout is common, former employees say. In June, The Economist analyzed 900 companies across 19 industries, and found that Epic had the worst work-life balance in the software and IT services category. Several former employees told CNBC their work at Epic was all-consuming. Epic said the average employee works between 44 and 45 hours a week, based on monthly time sheet submissions between June 2024 and June 2025. The company said its turnover rate last year was 7%. "People at Epic are dedicated and work hard," an Epic spokesperson said in a statement. Epic workers are entrusted with big projects, expected to interact directly with customers and generally take on a lot of responsibility. For some employees, that includes working alongside hospitals as they implement Epic's technology. "Some of these implementations really sucked," said Brendan Keeler, a former Epic employee who frequently blogs about the company online. "So much of the success of an implementation was just a function of the politics of the hospital." Epic recruits the vast majority of its employees straight out of college, so its staff is relatively young. All new staffers go through extensive training, including a five-hour corporate philosophy class where they're taught how to be a successful employee. Faulkner said she used to teach the class by herself but that she now has help from one or two other people. Faulkner's influence is present in every corner of Epic's campus, in its product and across much of the health-care industry. "Everybody knows Judy Faulkner," said Thomas, of Sutter Health. She's still got a lot to do. The health-care industry is reckoning with rising costs, staffing shortages, the impact of AI and the Trump administration's hefty cuts in the areas of medical science and research. And Faulkner isn't ready to quit. "It's interesting and it's challenging and it's worthwhile," Faulkner said.
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In today's column, I examine the recent remarks by the said-to-be 'Godfather of AI' that the best way to ensure that AI and ultimately artificial general intelligence (AGI) and artificial superintelligence (ASI) are in check and won't wipe out humankind would be to instill maternal instincts into AI. The idea is that maybe we could computationally sway current AI towards being motherly. This would hopefully remain intact as a keystone while we increasingly improve contemporary AI toward becoming the vaunted AGI and ASI. Although this seems to be an intriguing proposition, it has come under withering criticism from others in the AI community. Let's talk about it. This analysis of AI breakthroughs is part of my ongoing Forbes column coverage on the latest in AI, including identifying and explaining various impactful AI complexities (see the link here). Aligning AI With Humanity You might be aware that a longstanding research scientist in the AI community, named Geoffrey Hinton, has been credited with various AI breakthroughs, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. He has been generally labeled as the 'Godfather of AI' for his avid pursuits and accomplishments in the AI field. In fact, he is a Nobel Prize-winning computer scientist for his AI insights. In 2023, he left his executive position at Google so that he (per his own words) could speak freely about AI risks. Many noteworthy quotes of his are utilized by the media to forewarn about the coming dangers of pinnacle AI, when or if we reach AGI and ASI. There is a lot of back-and-forth nowadays regarding the existential risk of AI. Some refer to this as the p(doom), meaning that there is a probability of doom arising due to AI, for which you can either guess that the probability is low, medium, or high. For those who place a high probability on this weighty matter, they usually assert that AI will either choose to kill us all or perhaps completely enslave us. How are we to somehow avoid or at least mitigate this seemingly outsized risk? One approach entails trying to data train AI to be more aligned with human values, see my detailed discussion on human-centered AI at the link here. The hope is that if AI is more appreciative of humanity and computationally infused with our ethical and moral values, the AI might opt not to harm us. Another similar approach involves making sure that AI embodies principles such as the famous Asimov laws of robotics (see my explanation at the link here). A rule of Asimov is that AI isn't supposed to harm humans. Period, end of story. Whether those methods or any other of the floating around schemes will save us is utterly unknown. We are pretty much hanging in the wind. Good luck, humanity, since we will need to keep our fingers crossed and our lucky rabbit's foot in hand. For more about the ins and outs of AI existential risk, see my coverage at the link here. AI With Maternal Instincts At the annual Ai4 Conference on August 12, 2025, Hinton proclaimed that the means to shape AI toward being less likely to be gloomily onerous would be to instill computational 'maternal instincts' into AI. His notion seems to be that by tilting AI toward being motherly, the AI will care about people in a motherly fashion. He emphasized that it is unclear exactly how this might technologically be done. In any case, according to his hypothesized solution, AI that is infused with mother-like characteristics will tend to be protective of humans. How so? Well, first of all, the AGI and ASI will be much smarter than us, and, secondly, by acting in a motherly role, the AI will devotedly want to care for us as though we are its children. The AI will want to embrace its presumed offspring and ensure our survival. You might go so far as to believe that this motherly AI will guide us toward thriving as a species. AGI and ASI that robustly embrace motherly instincts might ensure that we would have tremendous longevity and enjoyable, upbeat lives. No longer would we be under the daunting specter of doom and gloom. Our AI-as-mom will be our devout protector and lovingly inspire us to new heights. Boom, drop the mic. Lopsided Maternal Emphasis Now that I've got that whole premise on the table, let's go ahead and give it a bit of a look-see. One of the most immediate reactions has been that the claim of 'maternal instincts' is overly rosy and nearly romanticized. The portrayal appears to suggest that motherly attributes are solely within the realm of being loving, caring, comforting, protective, sheltering, and so on. All of those are absolutely positive and altogether wonderful qualities. No doubt about it. Those are the stuff made of grand dreams. Is that the only side of the coin when it comes to maternal instincts? A somewhat widened perspective would say that maternal instincts can equally contain disconcerting ingredients. Consider this. Suppose that a motherly AI determines that humans are being too risky and the best way to save humankind is to keep us cooped up. No need for us to try and venture out into outer space or try to figure out the meaning of life. Those are dangers that might disrupt or harm us. Voila, AI-as-mom computationally opts to bottle us up. Is the AI doggedly being evil? Not exactly. The AI is exercising a parental preference. It is striving mightily to protect us from ourselves. You might say that motherly AI would take away our freedoms to save us, doing so for our own darned good. Thank you, AI-as-mom! Worries About Archetypes I assume that you can plainly observe that maternal instincts are not exclusively in the realm of being unerringly good. Another illustrative example would be that AI-as-mom will withdraw its affection toward us if we choose to be disobedient. A mother might do the same toward a child. I'm not suggesting that's a proper thing to do in real life, and only pointing out that the underlying concept of 'maternal instinct' is generally vague and widely interpretable. Thus, even if we could imbue motherly tendencies into AI, the manner in which those instincts are exhibited and play out might be quite far from our desired idealizations. Speaking of which, another major point of concern is that the use of a maternal archetype is wrong at the get-go. Here's what that means. The moment you invoke a motherly classification, you have landed squarely into an anthropomorphism of AI. We are applying norms and expectations associated with humans to the arena of AI. That's generally a bad idea. I've discussed at length that people are gradually starting to think that AI is sentient and exists on par with humans, see my discussion at the link here. They are wrong. Utterly wrong. It would seem that this assigning of 'mother' to AI is going to fuel that misconception about AI. We don't need that. The act of discussing AI as having maternal instincts, especially by anyone or those considered in great authority about AI, will draw many others into a false and undercutting path. They will undoubtedly follow the claims made by presumed experts and not openly question the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the matter. Though the intentions are aboveboard, the result is dismal and, frankly, disappointing. More On The Archetypes Angst Let's keep pounding away at the archetype fallacy. Some would say that the very conception of being 'motherly' is an outdated mode of thinking. Why should there be a category that myopically carries particular attributes associated with motherhood? Can't a mother have characteristics outside of that culturally narrowed scope? They quickly reject the maternal instincts proposition on the basis that it is incorrect or certainly a poorly chosen premise. The attempt seems to be shaped in a close-minded viewpoint of what mothers do. And what mothers are seemingly allowed to do. That's ancient times, some would insist. An additional interesting twist is that if the maternal instinct is on the table, it would seem eminently logical to also put the fatherhood instinct up there, too. Allow me to elaborate. Fatherhood Enters The Picture By and large, motherhood and fatherhood are archetypes that are historically portrayed as a type of pairing (in modern times, this might be blurred, but historically they have been rather distinctive and contrastive). According to the conventional archetypes, the 'traditional' mother is (for example) supposedly nurturing, while the 'traditional' father is supposedly (for example) more of the disciplinarian. A research study cleverly devised two sets of scales associated with these traditional perspectives of motherhood and fatherhood. The paper entitled 'Scales for Measuring College Student Views of Traditional Motherhood and Fatherhood' by Mark Whatley and David Knox, College Student Journal, January 2005, made these salient points (excerpts): The combined 153 declarative statements included in the two scales allow research experiments to be conducted to gauge whether subjects in a study are more prone to believe in those traditional characteristics and associated labels, or less prone. Moving beyond that prior study, the emphasis here and now is that if there is to be a focus on maternal instincts for AI, doing so seems to beg the question of why it should not also encompass fatherhood instincts. Might as well go ahead and get both of the traditional archetypes into the game. It would seem to make sense to jump in with both feet. What AI Has To Say On This I had earlier mentioned that Hinton did not specify a technological indication at this time of how AI developers might proceed to computationally imbue motherhood characteristics into existing AI. The same lack of specificity applies to the omitted archetype of imbuing fatherhood into AI. Let's noodle on that technological conundrum. One approach would be to data train AI toward a tendency to respond in a traditional motherhood frame and/or a fatherhood frame. In other words, perform some RAG (retrieval-augmented generation), see my explanation of RAG at the link here, and make use of customized instructions (see my coverage of customized instructions at the link here). I went ahead and did so, opting to use the latest-and-greatest of OpenAI, namely the newly released GPT-5 (for my review of GPT-5, see the link here). I first focused on maternal instincts. After doing a dialogue in that frame, I started anew and devised a fatherhood frame. I then did a dialogue in that frame. Let's see how things turned out. Talking Up A Storm Here's an example of a dialogue snippet of said-to-be maternal instincts: Next, here's an example of a dialogue snippet of said-to-be fatherhood instincts: I assume that you can detect the wording and tonal differences between the two instances, based on a considered traditional motherhood frame versus a traditional fatherhood frame. The Big Picture I would wager that the consensus among those AI colleagues that I know is that relying on AI having maternal instincts as a solution to our existential risk from AI, assuming we can get the AI to go maternal, just isn't going to cut the mustard. The same applies to the fatherhood inclination. No dice. Sorry to say that what seems like a silver bullet and otherwise appealing and simplistic means of getting ourselves out of a massive jam when it comes to AGI and ASI is not a likely proposition. Sure, it might potentially be helpful. At the same time, it has lots of gotchas and untoward repercussions. Do not bet your bottom dollar on the premise. A final comment for now. During the data training for my mini-experiment, I included this famous quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson: 'Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.' Do you think that the AI suitably instills that wise adage? As a seasoned parent, I would venture that this maxim missed the honed parental guise of the AI.
