As we all know, the death of every old chairman of a Korean chaebol family will trigger several bloody succession wars...
This time, it is also the turn of the LG Group, the fourth largest enterprise in South Korea, which has always been peaceful...
At the beginning of last year, the former chairman of LG Group Koo Bonmoo’s widow and two biological daughters took the current chairman and adopted son Koo Guangmo to court, demanding that all of Koo Bonmoo’s inheritance be taken back...
It is said that this is the first inheritance dispute since the establishment of LG Group in 1947. ... The lawsuit has been going on for almost a year, and there is no conclusion yet. The latest development is that Gu Benmoo’s eldest daughter also wants to participate in the group management, maybe she wants to fight for some power...
(Screenshot of SBS News)
In 2017, the third president of LG Group Koo Bon-moo was diagnosed with a brain tumor. After the brain tumor surgery at the end of the year, he was in poor health and could not speak...
(Koo Bon-moo)
In May 2018, He died without leaving a will, about The inheritance of US$1.5 billion became the focus of the struggle between the parties...
For a time, undercurrents surged within the LG Group and the Goo family. In order to stabilize the hearts of the group and the family's control, Goo Benmoo's family reached an agreement after multiple rounds of negotiations. By consensus, the inheritance distribution was completed.
Koo Bonmoo's family composition is very simple. He only had one wife, Kim Young-sik, and gave birth to his son Koo Won-mo, daughters Koo Yeon-kyung, and Koo Yeon-soo... His son Koo Won-mo unfortunately died in a car accident in 1994.
Since LG Group, like most conglomerates in South Korea, implements the primogeniture system, Koo Benmoo and his wife adopted the eldest son of their brother Koo Benling, his nephew Koo Guangmo, in 2004.
(Gu Guangmo)
Although Gu Guangmo's father Gu Benling is also a member of the Gu family, his mind is not on running a business, so they are marginalized figures in the family. When Gu Benmoo adopted Gu Guangmo, he had already graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology, majoring in computer engineering.
But after being adopted by Gu Benmoo and his wife, he was directly promoted to become the core focus of the group, the default future successor, and began to accept the successor training model...
He first joined LG in 2006 to study business management, and then entered the Stanford Business School in the United States. After studying, I worked in Silicon Valley for a year and joined LG Electronics, a New Jersey company in the United States.
(Ku Kwang-mo)
A few years before Koo Bon-moo’s death, Koo Kwang-mo had been appointed as the executive director of the LG Group’s business strategy group, holding 6.24% of the shares, and was on the Forbes Rich List of South Korea...
After Koo Bon-moo’s death, According to Korean law, in the absence of a will, 's spouse Kim Young-sik should receive one-third of the inheritance rights, and the rest should be divided equally between Gu Guangmo and his two biological daughters.
But the final result was that Gu Guangmo inherited 8.8% of the 11.3% LG shares held by Gu Benmoo, holding a total of 15% of the shares. In June of that year, he naturally became the fourth generation leader of the LG Group. The remaining 2.5% shares of
were inherited by Gu Benmao’s two daughters. The mother and daughter also inherited Gu Benmao’s other personal assets, including financial products, real estate and art, with a total value of approximately US$379 million.
After the inheritance was distributed for several years, both parties lived in peace...
Gu Guangmo had to pay an inheritance tax of approximately US$630 million because he inherited most of the inheritance, which is said to be the highest amount of inheritance tax in South Korea's history. And it must be paid in installments within 5 years. Only after the payment is completed can he officially obtain the shares...
may be unable to pay off the high inheritance tax due to too much pressure. In September 2022, Gu Guangmo filed a lawsuit against the Director of Yongsan Taxation Department The lawsuit claims that part of the inheritance tax has been overtaxed and requires its cancellation... Kim Young-sik and her daughter also participated in the lawsuit.
But in February last year, almost five years after the property division, Kim Young-sik and her daughter suddenly objected to the original inheritance distribution and sued the current president and adopted son Goo Kwang-mo to court, demanding a re-division of the estate...
(Kim Young-sik, mother and daughter) )
Gu Guangmo tried to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds that the three-year prosecution period stipulated in the inheritance law had passed, but failed. Because the content of the lawsuit filed by Kim Young-sik and his daughter contained the keyword "fraud"...
They said that Gu Guangmo Mo teamed up with his biological father Gu Benling and LG executives to falsely claim that Gu Benmao left a will and left all shares and assets to his adopted son, so as to stabilize the Gu family's absolute position in the group. After many negotiations, the previous inheritance distribution results were achieved...
Moreover, Gu Benling and LG executives found a locksmith to forcefully open two of Gu Benmoo's safes. They did not know what was taken, and they did not know before the action. Tell them...
Even so, the mother and daughter really became suspicious of Gu Guangmo in 2021. Gu Benmoo's daughter Gu Yeonkyung applied for a credit card and found that she was rejected due to huge debts. After investigation, it was found that Gu Guangmo used Their savings were used to pay inheritance tax, and their equity was used as mortgage loan...
According to Kim Young-sik's mother and daughter, they reached an agreement with Gu Guangmo, and Gu Guangmo paid the inheritance tax alone. In addition, according to calculations, Gu Guangmo actually received more inheritance than they initially agreed, and he alone received 75% of the inheritance.
At this point, the inheritance war officially kicked off. Kim Young-sik and her daughter demanded that they inherit all the inheritance of the old chairman, but did not ask for control of LG...
They submitted to the court recordings of family conversations in recent years, accusing them and Gu The friction between Guangmo and Guangmo is getting more and more intense. They have been misled by Gu Guangmo's words... He also produced a letter of explanation from Gu Guangmo before the lawsuit. He claimed that his employees did not have enough funds to pay inheritance tax in his name, so They used her assets, but they were ready to return the money to her and asked her not to question his inheritance rights...
(Kim Young-sik, mother and daughter)
In the first court negotiation, the two parties had a heated argument over the will. ...
lg company president and chief financial officer Ha Beom Jong attended as a witness...
(Ha Beom Jong) When the former chairman of
passed away, he was the leader of the financial management team of LG Group Holdings Company, responsible for managing the group's assets.
The mother and daughter said that Ha Bum Jong once told them that Koo Bon Moo issued a last wish to "hand over all managed assets to Gu Guang Mo" before the operation. However, on the same day, Ha Bum Jong denied the will...
He emphasized , LG Group has long implemented the principle of primogeniture, so the managed assets are divided through agreements and there is no separate will.
In short, it seems difficult for Kim Young-sik to prove the "fraudulent" behavior before signing the agreement...
Some Korean media invited a Seoul lawyer to analyze. The lawyer meant that, judging from the previous negotiations, although Kim Young-sik had a recording, if there was no There is clear evidence that it will be difficult for them to win this case.
And not long after the lawsuit started, several lawyers from the mother-daughter legal team mysteriously resigned from the lawsuit worth hundreds of millions of dollars...
(Resigned Lawyers)
However, the mother-daughter trio have not given up yet. They accepted interviews with international media and tried to use international public opinion to put pressure on Gu Guangmo...
At the end of last month, Gu Benmoo's daughter Gu Yeonkyung expressed her hope to participate in the management of the group and was full of confidence in it, as if she intended to This family inheritance dispute developed into a dispute over the management rights of the LG Group.
The style of painting has changed again, from fighting for money to fighting for power...
Although in the succession war between South Korea's chaebol families, Kim Young-sik and her daughter are already considered mild...
But what exactly this war will develop into, we have to wait and see...
