Lee Jae-yong, executive chairman of Samsung Electronics, is now the country’s richest person with a net worth of $34 billion, according to Forbes as of May 11.

His fortune increased by $12.4 billion since late March, when Forbes released its annual list of South Korea’s 50 richest people.

His younger sisters, Lee Boo-jin and Lee Seo-hyun, along with their mother Hong Ra-hee, ranked second, third and fourth, respectively.

Lee Boo-jin, president and chief executive of Hotel Shilla, has a net worth of $12.4 billion. Lee Seo-hyun, president of strategic planning at Samsung C&T, is worth $12 billion, while Hong Ra-hee holds $11.2 billion.

Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong attends a French-Korean business forum in Seoul on April 3, 2026. Photo by AFP

The family derives most of its wealth from holdings in Samsung Electronics, whose shares have climbed sharply as investors bet on rising demand for high-bandwidth memory, a type of advanced memory used in artificial intelligence chips.

Samsung Electronics is the world’s largest memory chipmaker by sales. Its HBM products supply major AI chipmakers including Nvidia, AMD and Alphabet.

Last week, its market capitalization reached $1 trillion, making it only the second Asian company after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to join the four-comma club.

On May 3, the Lee family completed South Korea’s largest-ever inheritance tax payment of 12 trillion won ($8 billion) on the estate of late chairman Lee Kun-hee, who died in 2020 at the age of 78, according to Korea Herald.