Luxury Department Store Chairman Shinsegae Becomes Billionaire Amid South Korea’s Garment Surge
Shinsegae department store in Seoul, South Korea.
SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg
South Korean luxury department store operator Shinsegae has become an unlikely beneficiary of the global AI boom.
As AI data center operators rush to buy memory chips, shares of Samsung and SK Hynix—the two biggest makers of computers essential to feeding data into advanced AI systems—have surged, helping make South Korea the world’s best-performing stock market this year.
Along with this newfound wealth, a growing number of South Korean retail investors are flocking to luxury goods like those sold at Shinsegae, according to analysts. The trend has sent Shinsegae shares up 220% year to date. The retailer has done better than Samsung, even though the company has no direct relationship with AI. The increase in shares made Chung Yoo-kyung, the company’s chairman, a billionaire.
Chung, 53, is Shinsegae’s largest shareholder, holding 29%. Forbes estimated Chung’s net worth at $1.3 billion as of Friday’s stock market close.
Along with rivals Lotte and Hyundai, Seoul-based Shinsegae is one of South Korea’s largest department store operators. The company has 13 department stores, including its flagship Shinsegae Gangnam—the country’s top-grossing department store, with revenue of nearly three trillion won ($2 billion) last year. The company also operates Shinsegae Centum City in Busan, which is reputed to be the world’s largest department store with an area of 293,905 square meters (3.16 million square meters).
Shinsegae Centum City.
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Shinsegae’s first-quarter revenue rose 11% year-on-year to 1.85 trillion won ($1.2 billion), while revenue nearly doubled to 145 billion won. Hana Securities analyst Park Jong-dae said in a June report that Shinsegae will benefit from increased luxury spending by Kospi investors, driven by the index’s 95% year-to-date increase.
Founded as Donghwa Department Store in 1955, two years after the Korean War, the business was acquired in 1963 by Samsung founder Lee Byung-chull—Chung’s grandfather—who renamed it Shinsegae (“new country” in Korean). Shinsegae operated as part of the Samsung Group until a 1997 family succession plan led to conflict, passing control to Lee’s youngest daughter (and Chung’s mother), Myung-hee. In May 2025, 82-year-old Myung-hee transferred her remaining 10% stake to Chung as part of a succession plan to split the Shinsegae Group between her two children. Chung’s older brother, Yong-jin, already a millionaire, acquired Myung-hee’s remaining shares in the discount chain E-Mart.
Yoo-kyung, who took over as chairman last year, was named to Forbes Asia’s Power Businesswomen 2025 list. Before he was appointed as the chairman, he was responsible for various corporate structures including hotels, luxury fashion and supermarkets. She holds a bachelor’s degree in visual design from Seoul’s Ewha Womans University and a master’s degree from the Rhode Island School of Design.
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