Kim Jung-ju, CEO of gaming firm Nexon’s holding company NXC, is Korea’s richest businessman, with assets valued at $14.1 billion, according to a report from a US think tank.

Kim was ranked 144th on a list of the world’s billionaires that showed Jeff Bezos, CEO of e-commerce behemoth Amazon, topping the list with assets totaling $178 billion. The CEO of luxury products behemoth LVMH Moet Hennessy, Bernard Arnault, and his family, were second on the list, with $162.6 billion.

In the report by the Program on Inequality at the left-leaning US think tank Institute for Policy Studies, 38 South Korean business tycoons were on the list. Kim was followed by pharmaceutical firm Celltrion Chairman Seo Jung-jin with $13.8 billion, and mobile messenger firm Kakao board chairman Kim Beom-su with $9.7 billion. They were the 150th and 236th wealthiest billionaires in the world.

Lee Jae-yong, the vice chairman of tech giant Samsung Electronics, came in 287th, with his wealth standing at $8.4 billion, while Chung Mong-koo, the honorary chairman of Hyundai Motor Group, came in 455th with his assets reaching $5.9 billion.

The Samsung heir’s ranking is expected to move up significantly in the future if he inherits the 20 trillion won ($17.7 billion) of assets left by his late father, the former Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee.

Around the world, the wealth owned by the billionaires jumped by 54 percent from $8.04 trillion to $12.39 trillion over the course of one year -- between March 18, 2020 and March 18, 2021.

Bezos’ assets jumped by 57 percent from $113 billion to $178 billion and Arnault saw his family‘s wealth soar 114 percent.

The report was written based on data from Forbes, Bloomberg and Wealth-X.

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)