[THE INVESTOR] South Koreans with financial assets worth more than 1 billion won (US$860,000) rose 15.9 percent last year from a year earlier mainly due to their equity and property investments, a private think tank report said on July 6.

The number of such Koreans climbed to 211,000 in 2015 from 182,000 the previous year, according to KB Financial Group’s research institute.

“In the first half of last year, ample liquidity was injected into the markets to help support growth. A rally in the stock markets brought high equity gains back to investors, and the government’s stimulus packages pushed up their real estate prices,” the report showed.

In the past five years since 2011 when the KB research institute began to compile related data, the number of Koreans worth 1 billion won or more grew 10 percent annually.

Nearly 70 percent of the wealthy people lived in Seoul and its adjacent Gyeonggi Province. They earned an average of 260 million won per year, far higher than the average income of 47.67 million won in average households, it said.

(theinvestor@heraldcorp.com)