Half of chaebol board members from SKY schools or overseas

An infographic published by The Korea Herald caught my eye this morning, headlined "Half of major firm's board members come from SKY, overseas schools."  The text accompanying the graphic noted that "Almost half of the executives at affiliates of the nation’s top 10 companies were found to be graduates of South Korea’s leading three universities or from schools abroad, according to Chaebul.com, a website devoted to conglomerate data. Up to 594 ― or 23.9 percent ― of the 2,483 surveyed executives were graduates of Seoul National University, Korea University and Yonsei University, while another 22.6 percent were from overseas universities as of last year." Although anecdotal, this is further evidence that Korea, unlike Japan, embraced study abroad to train many of its leaders and technocrats in recent decades. Indeed, it would be interesting to make a quantitative comparison with Japan on this dimension of corporate leadership.