The World's Richest Koreans: At The Top, A Billionaire Baker

Dessert in South Korea has long been a desultory conclusion to a meal. Seoul bakers seem content with gentle riffs on the staple sweet: red-bean-paste-filled rice cakes. The rest of the world, meanwhile, is caught in one gigantic sugar fit over cupcakes, clairs and donut-cum-crossinant cronuts.

Hur Young-In, who breaks into the billionaire ranks for the first time, is working on expanding the peninsula's palate for pastries. Since starting what became the SPC Group in 1983, he has brought Dunkin' Donuts, Baskin-Robbins and Jamba Juice to South Korea and, most importantly, built the Paris Baguette chain. He opened the first one in 1988, selling French pastries - often tweaked for Asia - to a Korean population just beginning to afford any sort of luxury. Now he has 3,000 outlets in South Korea, and aims to open another 3,000 in 60 other countries. He already has 125 in China and 36 in the U.S. (Here, a complete list of Korea's richest.)

Hur's fortune skyrocketed to $1.075 billion, a nearly 75% increase from a year ago, and he now ranks No. 27 on our annual list of the 50 wealthiest people in the country. Nearly everyone else returning to the list from 2013 also enjoyed a rise in fortune--thanks partly to an appreciating won, up 10.4% in a year. The slow economy didn't help much: South Korea's GDP rose only 2.8% in 2013, and the Kospi returned only 3.5% over the past 12 months.

Last month people from all walks of life quickly responded to an event now engraved on the Korean consciousness, the 300 deaths in the sinking of a ferry. The country's richest person, Lee Kun-Hee, for one, directed Samsung Heavy Industries to dispatch its giant marine crane to help lift the submerged vessel.

This year's tally produced 7 new billionaires (and a record 30 in all). Notables included Hankook Tire titan Cho Yang-Rai at No. 22; search-engine tycoon Lee Hae-Jin at No. 24; study-materials scion Chang Pyung-Soon at No. 26; and gambling king Chun Phil-Lip at No. 28.

Four tycoons joined the list for the first time. The most striking newcomer is Kim Bum-Soo. He runs Kakao, the mobile-phone platform responsible for messaging application KakaoTalk. Debuting at No. 32, he's poised to become a billionaire if his company goes public next year, as planned.

Like bakery baron Hur, these corporate aristocrats have proved they have the right ingredients to expand their companies and amass head-turning fortunes.

Editor's note: The piece has been updated to correct the spelling of Hur Young-In's name and to clarify SPC Group's growth in South Korea.