Then-Gyeonggi Province Governor Kim Moon-soo (second from left) buys Hynix Semiconductor shares at a Nonghyup branch inside the provincial government building in Suwon in February 2007, as part of a campaign to pressure the government into allowing an expansion of Hynix's Icheon factory. [Gyeonggi Provincial Government]
Then-Gyeonggi Province Governor Kim Moon-soo (second from left) buys Hynix Semiconductor shares at a Nonghyup branch inside the provincial government building in Suwon in February 2007, as part of a campaign to pressure the government into allowing an expansion of Hynix's Icheon factory. [Gyeonggi Provincial Government]

As SK Hynix leads a rally in the Korean stock market, attention has turned to former Minister of Employment and Labor Kim Moon-soo, who earned more than 100 times his original investment in SK Hynix shares — a windfall tied to a political protest purchase nearly two decades ago.

When Kim was the People Power Party's presidential candidate last year, he disclosed total financial assets of 547.59 million won ($356,000), which included 30 SK Hynix shares held in his name and 10 shares held by his wife.

Kim bought those 30 shares in February 2007, when he was Gyeonggi Province governor, paying around 20,000 won each at a Nonghyup branch inside the provincial government building in Suwon. With SK Hynix shares trading at 2.58 million won as of Wednesday, holding them to the present would represent a roughly 100-fold return.

The purchase, however, was not driven by investment interest.

The Roh Moo-hyun administration had blocked an expansion of the Hynix factory in Icheon, citing copper discharge through wastewater. Kim bought the shares as a show of defiance against that decision.

"The share price has been falling and the future looks uncertain — I bought these to encourage and support Hynix," Kim said at the time. He also argued that the annual copper output from Hynix's factory was equivalent to what 190 pigs produce through their waste in a year, and called on the government to allow the factory expansion if the number of pigs raised in the area were reduced.

Gyeonggi Province actively backed Hynix at the time to protect the regional economy and local jobs, and civil servants in Icheon voluntarily joined a campaign to buy Hynix shares.

Kim revisited the episode last year during a meeting with the heads of five major business groups while he was a presidential candidate.

"SK — Hynix at the time — was actually under bank administration, before Chairman Chey Tae-won took it over," he said, recalling his days as governor. "It is common sense that a cutting-edge company can only thrive when it has a clear owner. Civil servants and banks simply cannot make a high-tech company succeed. That is why we also supported Samsung as much as we could."

Kim added that he had personally refrained from trading shares on principle. "I believe public officials should not deal in stocks, so I did not," he said. "Not doing so has left me somewhat in the dark about it, but I do know enough about how people who invest heavily go about it."

Meanwhile, analysts say Kim likely still holds the shares, as there is no indication he has sold them.

Kim Jae-won, a supreme council member of the People Power Party and a close associate of Kim Moon-soo, said on a YouTube channel last year that the former minister still holds about 10 of the shares and does not know how much they are worth. "It seems like he just never got around to selling them because he doesn't know how," Kim Jae-won said.


yeonjoo7@heraldcorp.com