New rich overtake old money of chaebol in Korea's billionaire rankings

A new elite of uber-rich entrepreneurs is shooting up the wealth rankings in South Korea, overtaking the families behind the country’s decades-old sprawling conglomerates known as “chaebol.”

Brian Kim, the founder of mobile-messaging app Kakao Corp., is the most prominent example with a fortune of $12.9 billion, who recently replaced Samsung group heir Jay Y. Lee as the nation’s richest person. But other self-made billionaires abound.

There’s Chang Byung-gyu who completed a listing of game developer Krafton Inc. just this week, and Bom Kim, a South Korea-born U.S. national who took e-commerce giant Coupang Inc. public in the U.S. earlier