Legendary Korean baseball pitcher Park Chan-ho and his millionaire father-in-law have more than family connections in common. Both currently have sizeable real-estate earnings and are committed to philanthropy.

Park, the first Korean pitcher in Major League Baseball, currently has a net worth of $40 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth.

Making his MLB debut in 1994 with the Los Angeles Dodgers, he earned a total of $88.9 million during his 18-year career thanks to his powerful pitching delivery. He earned $86.6 million during his 16 years in the MLB and $2.2 million with baseball team Orix Buffaloes in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball.

Having retired in 2012, Park gains a portion of his current earnings through real estate.

He owns a building worth 45 billion won ($37.8 million) in Korea’s wealthy district of Gangnam, in southern Seoul, and earns around 900 million won alone from annual rents.

Park constructed the 17-story building with an investment of 7 billion won, having bought a building on the site in December 2003 for 7.3 billion won.

The building is called the PSG building as it houses the sports management company Park’s Sports Group that is 100 percent owned and named after him. 

According to a building management insider, other than using the building to house PSG and for rental purposes, Park also uses his building to hold events for philanthropic causes, and some of his career awards and possessions are displayed in the building.

Park currently runs two philanthropic organizations in Korea and in the U.S. The Park Chan-ho Scholarship Foundation and Park Chan-ho Dream Foundation were founded in 1997 and 2009, respectively, to support youth baseball.

The current self-made real estate millionaire’s father-in-law also shares similar interests. Park Choong-seo, the father of Chan-ho’s wife Park Ri-hye, earned most of his fortune through real estate and is committed to supporting Korean youths.

The second-generation Korean Japanese real estate tycoon Choong-seo is estimated to have wealth of well-over 100 billion won as he heads the Tokyo building and apartment leasing company Chuo Tochi Co. 

Founded in 1947, Chuo Tochi Co., worth 37.8 billion yen ($351.9 million), currently owns 12 office buildings and eight apartments in central Tokyo.

Due to the ownership of costly real estate in central Tokyo, Choong-seo at one point ranked within the top 100 taxpayers in Japan. In 1998, he ranked No. 76 by paying 281.7 million yen in taxes.

Choong-seo is also the president of his late father’s Park Yong-koo Scholarship Foundation.

His father, born in 1909 in Korea, went to Japan at the age of 24 and worked odd jobs, using the money to later become a successful self-made real estate businessman.

Because Yong-koo reportedly did not want Koreans who studied in Japan to go through hardships like he did, he created a scholarship foundation with an initial 150 million won (worth more than than 10 billion won in today’s money) in 1967.

After his death in 1978, his eldest son Choong-seo took over the scholarship foundation, and the foundation currently supports 20 to 30 Korean students studying in Japan every year by granting a monthly scholarship of 1 million won.

The foundation has supported over 1,500 students over the past 50 years.

By The Korea Herald Superrich Team (seoyounglee@heraldcorp.com)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hong Seung-wan
Cheon Ye-seon
Seo Jee-yeon
Yoon Hyun-jong
Min Sang-seek
Lee Seo-young