IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/cbscwp/311857.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Elite control through marriage over institutional change

Author

Listed:
  • Kim, Francis D.
  • Raj, Prateek

Abstract

Economic inequality remains a persistent and widely studied issue in the social sciences. South Korea provides a striking example where the top 23 business groups, controlled by ultra-wealthy, family-owned conglomerates (chaebols), have maintained significant economic persistence and resisted outsider entry, even amidst the disruptive forces of the 21st-century digital age. This study sheds light on how chaebol families have strategically evolved their use of marriage alliances as a key channel to political networks, significantly shaping the dynamics of elite influence over time. In the pre-democratic era, chaebols often formed marriages with politicians to strengthen their influence and boost corporate value. For example, the 2024 divorce between SK Group's Chey Tae-won and Roh So-young, daughter of former President Roh Tae-woo, highlights how such alliances helped secure key advantages, like SK's telecom permit in the 1980s (BBC News, 2024.5). However, marriages with other elites or commoners didn't provide the same benefits. Contrary to the perspective presented by The Economist (2015.4) that such practices among Korean chaebols are enduring, this study finds that blood-based alliances between politicians and elite businessmen was a temporal, institution-specific strategy that have largely disappeared in the democratic era. As South Korea transitioned to a more liberalized regime, the frequency of these political marriages has drastically declined, as confirmed by our analysis. Instead, chaebol families have adapted by leveraging elite marriages within their own business circles to sustain family control over top business groups. These practices have ensured their continued economic dominance while limiting outsider entry into their exclusive networks. This study documents the evolution of marriage alliances as a critical mechanism through which chaebols have navigated changing institutional landscapes, maintaining their entrenched economic power despite shifting political and social conditions.

Suggested Citation

  • Kim, Francis D. & Raj, Prateek, 2025. "Elite control through marriage over institutional change," Working Papers 354, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:cbscwp:311857
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/311857/1/1917820410.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:cbscwp:311857. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/gsuchus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.