On the 8th, National Tax Service Commissioner Im Kwang-Hyun stated, “Among those who filed for overseas emigration, only an annual average of 139 over the past three years had assets of 1 billion KRW or more.”

In a Facebook post that day, he said, “The report cited by the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry predicted that the net outflow of Korean millionaires would surge to 2,400 last year, but this is very different from the facts.”

According to National Tax Service statistics presented by Im, of the annual average 2,904 people who filed overseas emigration notifications over the three years from 2022 to 2024, only 139 had assets of 1 billion KRW or more. Their average assets per person also fell each year, from 9.7 billion KRW in 2022 to 5.46 billion KRW in 2023 and 4.65 billion KRW in 2024.

This directly contradicts the analysis by Henley & Partners, a UK immigration consulting firm, cited by the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry on the 3rd. Henley & Partners projected that in 2024, 1,200 individuals in Korea with assets of $1 million (approximately 1.3 billion KRW) moved abroad, and that in 2025 the figure would surge to 2,400.

Im also said, “We did not find a tendency for people with greater wealth to move to countries without an inheritance tax.”

According to the National Tax Service, of the annual average 2,904 people who emigrated over the past three years, 1,125 (39%) moved to countries without an inheritance tax. In fact, more1,779 (61%)moved to places with an inheritance tax.

Among those who moved to countries without an inheritance tax, the vast majority1,090had assets under 1 billion KRW. Only 27 people with assets of 15 billion KRW moved to inheritance-tax-exempt countries, and just 3 were in the 510 billion KRW range. Among those with assets exceeding 10 billion KRW, there were 5.

Im said, “Viewed through the National Tax Service’s statistics, high-net-worth individuals did not decide to emigrate simply by considering the burden of inheritance tax,” adding, “Overseas migration results from a combination of diverse factors, including not only tax issues but also settlement conditions and healthcare and education environments.”