South Korea, 4th Largest Wealth Outflow Country with 2,400 Millionaires Moving Abroad

This year, 142,000 millionaires worldwide crossed national borders—a record high. From Korea alone, 2,400 wealthy individuals departed, ranking fourth globally after the United Kingdom (16,500), China (7,800), and India (3,500). By contrast, the main destinations attracting the wealthy were the United Arab Emirates (9,800), the United States (7,500), and Italy (3,600).

What these figures clearly indicate is this: Korea has become a country that the wealthy want to leave, while the UAE and the United States have become countries the wealthy want to move to.

While the UAE attracted 9,800 millionaires, Korea lost 2,400. With a bold policy mix of zero personal income tax and zero inheritance tax, the UAE is drawing global wealth on an unprecedented scale, transforming a desert economy into a global financial hub.

Equally striking is the turnaround seen in Southern European countries such as Italy, Greece, and Portugal. Once mired in fiscal crises, these nations are now actively attracting wealthy individuals through flat-tax regimes on foreign income, writing new growth stories by turning crisis into opportunity.

Korea’s reality, however, tells a different story. Despite imposing a 50 percent inheritance tax—one of the highest in the OECD—there is little consideration of how this burden affects long-term growth potential. Even the founders and controlling families of global champions such as Samsung and Hyundai Motor are forced to divert trillions of won toward inheritance tax payments, undermining their ability to focus on corporate management, all under the banner of “fairness.”

The 2,400 individuals who left Korea are overwhelmingly entrepreneurs, investors, and highly skilled professionals. When they leave, investment capital declines, new business opportunities disappear, and the economy’s overall growth potential weakens.

A look at the fastest-growing wealth markets in the world reveals a common pattern: they actively leverage inflows of affluent individuals. Conversely, the outflow of wealth is a leading indicator of future economic stagnation.

While countries around the world compete to attract capital and talent to create new engines of growth, Korea remains trapped in an inward-looking obsession with “distributive justice.” It focuses more on dividing the pie than on enlarging it—overlooking the fact that the pie itself is shrinking.

The United Kingdom’s top ranking in millionaire outflows—with 16,500 departures—illustrates the same dynamic. The abolition of a non-domiciled tax regime that had existed for over 200 years triggered a large-scale exodus of wealth, leading to a sharp downturn in London’s prime real estate market and casting doubt on its status as a global financial hub.

Growth is the fundamental solution to virtually all social problems. In a growing economy, jobs expand, wages rise, and tax revenues increase naturally, benefiting all segments of society. In a stagnant economy, by contrast, only zero-sum conflicts remain.

Korea now faces a clear choice: continue to cling to redistribution-driven thinking while watching growth engines drain away, or join the global shift toward a new growth paradigm.

In the face of this historic movement of 142,000 global millionaires, Korea’s path forward is unmistakable. Excessive inheritance tax rates must be adjusted to become more growth-friendly, and regulations that suppress entrepreneurship must be dismantled. Korea must create an environment in which foreign investors want to start new businesses. Above all, attracting wealthy individuals from abroad should be viewed not as a “special privilege,” but as a strategic investment in growth.

Hye-rim Park
Senior Research Fellow, The Center for Free Enterprise

Korean version: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=press&pn=2&idx=28121