[Musings] LG Family Inheritance Dispute and the Inferiority of Women

 

[JAPAN TIMES] I don't think this actually affects anything skincare-related at LG H&H down the line, so this is basically gossip. But just as a woman, I find this whole thing annoying.

I recommend reading the article, but to summarize (with my bent, sorry I can't help it): 

• LG is a chaebol: one of many family-owned megacorps that helped turn SK into the economic and tech powerhouse it is today. We are talking the LG of everything, not just a division of LG.
  
• Former LG Chairman Koo Bon-moo "only" had two daughters and because wOmEn R iNfeRioR & CaN'T dO mEn's wOrk, he and his wife adopted their eldest nephew, Koo Kwang-mo, and groomed him to take over LG. Keep in mind, that child is his brother's kid who was, and still is, very much alive.
• That Chairman suddenly died in 2018 without a will, but that's okay, the succession plans have been in place.
• But MAGICALLY! *GASP* Koo Kwang-mo and his biological dad miraculously "found" a will in his uncle/adopted-father's office and to make sure the public sees a smooth transition, the widow "was told she needed to forgo inheriting any of her husband’s shares to ensure Koo Kwang-mo’s succession" and the daughters get no shares.
• But something was amiss when one of the daughters went to open a store credit card to take advantage of a discount, and she was denied because she had too many loans. Turns out the 50% tax on inheritance was taken out from their monies, rather than from their adopted brother/cousin, who they said he said he would (but he asked his adopted mom to temporarily step in and shoulder the tax because LG had no money?!?!)
  
• Wife and daughters of former Chairman Koo Bon-moo are suing and have said they don't want to take over LG, but they want the shares that are owed to them, monies and their Seoul home.
• Not surprisingly, Koo Bon-moo and LG refutes the women's claims, probably because they're women who are just not important to LG anymore.

Stark reminder for anyone blinded by the shininess of the hallyu wave: SK is still a very conservative country. It was only 70 years ago (ie: one generation) that SK came out of the war and bounded into 12th largest GDP in the world. All the marketing in the world is not going to change that. And if you haven't been able to tell from my other entries, in my opinion, SK companies as a whole are very good at marketing (thanks to the help of the SK government because they understand soft power).

What is going to change that, is people actually stepping up and challenging the "expected" norm.

I often say I don't care about rich people problems because it's usually shit like this: it's self manufactured. Boo for you, your life must be so hard. But I'm all for challenging the patriarchy and questioning why things are they way they are.

So I guess I'm rooting for the spoiled brats who apparently didn't have basic logic to get decent lawyers to go over a contract worth millionsss of dollars and also didn't know how to keep track of their finances to the point they only found out there was a problem years later when they were horribly embarrassed when they were denied a credit card while shopping.

Welcome to the real world where you don't matter. Because you're the wrong gender.