Trial of Kakao founder mixes K-pop stock-rigging, pushback on billionaires

Brian Kim — who built a simple messaging service into a $22 billion empire spanning social media, content and fintech — is grappling with charges he tried to thwart BTS-agency Hybe Co.’s rival bid by pushing up SM’s price. The billionaire entrepreneur goes on trial in Seoul alongside three former and current Kakao executives, also charged with manipulating the target’s stock. 

It’s a dramatic setback for one of South Korea’s highest-profile entrepreneurs, once hailed for helping transform an economy ruled by dynastic family-run conglomerates (or chaebol). Kakao today provides much of the country’s 50 million people with messaging, banking, gaming and taxi-hailing services.

At the trial’s first, mainly procedural, hearing on Wednesday, the presiding judge stressed he would like to move the case along efficiently. He set the next hearing for Oct. 8.

1. Who is Brian Kim?

The 58-year-old tycoon, known in Korea as Kim Beom-su, founded the company that would become Kakao in 2006. Four years later, he started the massively successful KakaoTalk messaging app, which would go on to become the heart of the country’s 15th largest conglomerate by assets. 

At one point, Kim — who as a boy shared a room with seven family members — briefly surpassed Samsung Electronics Co. Executive Chairman Jay Y. Lee to become the country’s richest person. His fortune has since plummeted, from a peak of more than $14 billion to around $3.2 billion as of this week.

The trial marks a low point in Kim’s rags-to-riches story, and a shift in perceptions. Kim and fellow entrepreneurs like Coupang Inc.’s Bom Kim were once hailed as visionaries who prevailed against Silicon Valley titans to carve out their own stakes on the internet — foils to the steel firms and shipbuilders that control Korea’s business landscape. Kim encouraged colleagues to call him Brian and address each other by their English nicknames, eschewing the titles that are the norm in Korean corporate culture.

But as their power rose, government officials grew concerned about the way internet services were displacing incumbents in fields like banking, retail, entertainment and even mom-and-pop physical stores. Kakao’s proliferation into…