WHEN Koo Bon-moo, chairperson of South Korean conglomerate LG, died in 2018, there wasn’t much question, at least publicly, of who would next preside over the company.

LG, a US$10 billion corporate empire, is governed by the principle of male primogeniture. Succession was effectively settled 14 years earlier when Koo and his wife adopted their eldest nephew, Koo Kwang-mo. The adoption was necessitated by tragedy and tradition after the couple’s teenage son died in 1994, and their efforts for another male heir resulted in a second daughter.

The Koo family has controlled LG since it was founded in 1947, and the transition that elevated Kwang-mo to the helm seemed seamless, burnishing the family’s reputation for harmony.

It wasn’t.

The former chairperson died, at age 73, without a will. What followed was a power struggle within the Koo family and LG over the inheritance of his estimated US$1.5 billion fortune – including his 11 per cent stake in the company. Now, five years later, the former chairperson’s widow and two daughters are suing Koo Kwang-mo, accusing him and other LG executives of deception to steal their rightful inheritance to bolster his claim to the company.

The women said they want their full inheritance, but are not seeking control of LG.

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The lawsuit not only pits the matriarch of one of South Korea’s wealthiest families and her daughters against the adopted male heir, who is now one of the country’s most influential business figures. It also challenges LG’s patriarchal tradition that allows the oldest male successor to seize power and wealth, leaving female family members as afterthoughts in the company.

Omnipresent in South Korea, LG is a holding company comprising 11 publicly traded businesses, including LG Chem, the country’s largest materials and chemicals firm, and LG Electronics, whose televisions, dishwashers and other home appliances are popular worldwide.

In a legal filing, the former chairperson’s widow, Kim Young-shik, and her daughters, Koo Yeon-kyung and Koo Yeon-sue, accused LG executives of colluding with Koo Kwang-mo and his biological father to swindle them.

In transcripts of secretly recorded conversations filed in the legal documents, Koo Kwang-mo pleads with his adopted mother not to challenge the inheritance because it will hurt LG’s image and his leadership of the company, potentially tarnishing his reputation among the Korean public.

“The scariest thing is the public opinion,” he said, according to the transcript. “How are they going to look at this situation? ‘Someone got greedy,’ or that I didn’t come visit and do a good job of caring for my mother.”

In addition, the women accused Ha Beom-jong, the former chairperson’s aide and now LG’s president, of misleading them to believe that there was a will that left everything to Koo Kwang-mo. Without a will, South Korean law states, the widow would be entitled to inherit one-third of the estate with the remainder divided equally between the two daughters and Kwang-mo.

Instead, the women said they were duped into an agreement in which roughly 75 per cent of the estate went to Kwang-mo. The lawsuit, filed in Seoul Western District Court, seeks to redistribute the estate according to the legal standard.

“We cannot stand having our rights, protected under the constitution and the law, be disregarded just because we are women,” the women said in a notice filed with the lawsuit.

Yulchon, a law firm representing Kwang-mo, said that the inheritance is “a legally settled matter” that was resolved four years ago after extensive negotiations, and that there have been about 10 rounds of consultations and several revisions since the chairperson’s death. It also noted Kim had signed a document agreeing that Kwang-mo should receive the LG shares and assets related to controlling the company.

In 2017, Bon-moo was 72 and still seemed healthy. He went to the doctor because his face appeared slightly lopsided, and he was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer.

Bon-moo’s brain surgery in April 2017 went smoothly, but after a second operation in December, he suffered a seizure that left him unable to speak. He died in May 2018.

His death raised a possible succession battle. During his illness, the company was being run by one of his other brothers, Koo Bon-joon. Koo Kwang-mo, who was 40 at the time, had been an LG executive for a decade but had accrued little management experience.

In the blur of the funeral proceedings, his wife and daughters claim, Kwang-mo’s biological father and LG officials started angling for control.

Without notifying them, the women say, Kwang-mo’s biological father and LG officials enlisted a locksmith to help them pry open the former chairperson’s safes at the company office and a vacation home.

Then Ha, who had been Bon-moo’s aide, and another employee came to the family’s stately home in Seoul and told them that the senior Koo had left a will, according to the women in interviews with The New York Times. His wishes, they recalled the employees telling them, were that all his shares and the chairmanship go to his adopted son, in keeping with family custom since LG’s founding. Ha has denied in court testimony that he ever told the family there was a will.

“The person my father trusted the most and supposedly knew everything came to us and said there was a will, and based on that, it all goes to Kwang-mo,” Koo Yeon-kyung, the eldest daughter, 45, said in an interview.

Kim, 71, said she was told she needed to forgo inheriting any of her husband’s shares to ensure Kwang-mo’s succession and prevent any challenge from her late husband’s brother, Bon-joon. She said she went along with it, but questioned Ha about whether Bon-moo truly wanted his daughters to receive no shares. She said Kwang-mo eventually agreed to give roughly one-fifth of Bon-moo’s shares, worth about US$270 million by current share prices, to his two sisters.

The women said they were told that they would receive the former chairperson’s cash, other investments and the family’s home in Seoul, and that Kwang-mo would pay hundreds of millions of dollars in inheritance tax. South Korea levies a tax of at least 50 per cent on inherited assets over US$2.3 million.

The women said they continued living their lives normally. Yeon-kyung said she remembered her father’s wishes that she get involved in running LG’s charitable foundations and started working at one of them as an adviser in 2021.

Around that time, Yeon-kyung said, she felt something was amiss when she applied for a store credit card to get a discount on a gift for a friend but was rejected because she had too many loans. She said that came as a surprise to her.

Realising how little she, her sister and her mother knew about their finances, she started going from bank to bank to pull years’ worth of statements. There were large inheritance tax payments and loans against their LG shares that did not comport with their understanding that Kwang-mo alone would shoulder the tax.

As the women pieced together the state of their finances, they said, they realised that Kwang-mo had also received more cash and investment assets than they thought they had agreed to.

Yeon-kyung said she and her mother began secretly recording conversations with Kwang-mo and Ha in 2022. Throughout the year, the exchanges grew tense, and at times, emotional, according to excerpts from transcripts, which the plaintiffs have cited as evidence that they were misled by the men now running LG.

In one recording from November 2022, Kim complained to Kwang-mo that they were treated by the finance staff as if they could be ignored because they were women.

“All this time has passed, and now that we look into it, so much was done without our knowledge,” she said, according to a transcript.

“The ‘our’ you mention doesn’t include me, right?” Kwang-mo asked in return.

Kwang-mo sent his mother a letter in January clarifying the unexplained withdrawals from her accounts. He said that, unbeknown to him, “the employees” were short on funds to pay the inheritance tax under his name, so they paid it under her name using her assets, but that they had planned to pay her back. Still, he asked her not to assert her inheritance rights.

“If the elders each asserted their rights under the inheritance law, LG’s management control would not have been passed down to the fourth generation as it is now,” he wrote in the letter.

A month later, the women filed suit. NYTIMES