Who is Kim Beom-su, South Korea’s richest man in 2022? The self-made billionaire grew up in poverty and started out in Samsung – before founding Kakao and making his fortune
- The former Kakao chairman just topped Forbes Korea’s 2022 rich list with a net worth of US$9.6 billion, despite being mired in gambling and share option scandals in recent years
- Also known as Brian Kim, he joins Elon Musk and Melinda Gates in signing The Giving Pledge to eventually donate more than half of his assets to charity
Kim Beom-su, founder of Kakao, tops the Forbes richest list of Koreans in 2022 for the first time with a net worth of US$9.6 billion. This is an impressive feat given that he once faced an inquiry from Korea’s Fair Trade Commission in 2021 for allegedly leaving out “necessary information or falsely reported about K Cube Holdings, an investment firm fully owned by Kim, over the past five years”.
Here’s what you need to know about South Korea’s richest billionaire of 2022 – and how he got to where he is today.
He grew up in poverty
It’s hard to imagine what Kim’s life looked like before his billion-dollar fortune. In a profile in The Financial Times, Kim, 56, also known as Brian Kim, recalled that his family shared a bedroom in a poor neighbourhood in Seoul and that his parents struggled to make a living. He was the first one in his family to go to university and he paid his way by offering private tutoring sessions.
“We had to create our own paths because my parents didn’t have time to take care of us,” he said in the interview. “A great degree of autonomy was given to us, which also taught me a sense of responsibility.”
He first worked at Samsung
The same Financial Times profile mentioned that he started out as a software engineer at Samsung SDS, the company’s IT services unit. But he left after five years to open an internet cafe and to launch online game portal Hangame, which then merged with search engine Naver to become South Korea’s dominant web portal, NHN.
After heading NHN for five years, he moved to Silicon Valley in 2005 to expand the company’s presence in the US. However, it was tougher than expected, and he left NHN for another venture.
Then, in 2007, the iPhone came out. Kim, who was in California at the time, was mesmerised by the smartphone. He and the members of Iwilab, now Kakao, which he founded in 2006, developed messenger apps for the new mobile product as they believed the smartphone was primarily going to be used as a “means of communication”. according to The Korea Herald. Kim ended up developing KakaoTalk, which then merged with web portal Daum to become Kakao.