Korea’s major conglomerates are reminiscing about their failures to secure Internet domains named after their founders and scions as eBay put the domain leebyungchull.com up for auction.

The starting price for the domain named after the Samsung founder is $21 million, or about 23.9 billion won on the American auction and shopping site.

The chaebol, however, has no plans to purchase domain names for high prices from the so-called domain hunters.

“There is no reason to spend so much money to buy the domain,” a Samsung official said.

“Jumping on the commercial bandwagon would be a disgrace to the founder’s spirit.”

Samsung got hold of leekunhee.com and leejaeyong.com, named after its current chairman and his heir.

Hyundai has chungmongkoo.com, but not chungjuyoung.com.

LG runs a website koobonmoo.pe.kr about its chairman, but does not own domains named after its founder Koo In-hwoi or honorary chairman Koo Ja-kyung.

Lotte has not secured a domain named after its founder Shin Kyuk-ho.

Hanhwa Group has nailed domains named after its former and incumbent chairmen

Instead of securing the domains, SK Group has websites about its founder, former and incumbent chairmen linked to SK.com.

“The World Intellectual Property Organization restricts preoccupancy of domains named after famous people, and there was a case where an entity was allowed to retrieve a domain being traded, so we do not worry too much,” an SK official said.

Industry watchers call for an introduction of regulations on trading chaebol founder and tycoon name domains for profits.

By Kim So-hyun (sophie@heraldcorp.com)