Word: chaebols
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...Diversification is also helping to create new jobs outside Korea's traditional mainstay employers, the conglomerates, which have been forced to shed staff to stay competitive. Shim Kyung Joo was working at giant Sunkyung Chemicals' game division when the Asian crisis hit. The financially strapped chaebol had to trim its business empire, so Shim secured some venture capital from the government and turned his division into a software company called Wizard Soft. Freed from the dead hands of chaebol executives, Shim and his young gamemakers were soon spinning off hit products like Jurassic Era Primitive War II. The company...
...small sense, Korea has been blessed by disaster. The 1997 crash forced government leaders to put the economy through the wringer: on the brink of bankruptcy, the government cleaned up the creaky financial system and reined in the big chaebol conglomerates, blamed for killing the economy with reckless borrowing. While other Asian countries, most notably Japan, have been slow to excise the failing companies and unproductive assets that are a drag on economic growth, Korea has been more ruthless. For example, bad debts at Korean banks were reduced by more than 55% last year thanks to aggressive disposal of distressed...
...chief miracle maker. He started out selling rice as a runaway teenager, set up his own construction company, then piled into everything from supertankers to microchips. His energy and drive were Olympian, his chutzpah legendary: he once sold a ship before Hyundai even had a shipyard. But like other chaebol chieftains, he fueled his empire with cheap debt and political favors, and Korea's economic crash in 1997 discredited the formula. By then Chung was dreaming of driving his bulldozers north. Taking one last audacious turn in the driver's seat, he poured millions into North Korea, hoping his money...
Less than three years ago, South Korea joined the ranks of the world's most developed nations, and parents aspired to get their sons into white-collar jobs at such giant chaebol, or conglomerates, as Samsung that dominate the economy. More than a year of life under the yoke of a humiliating $58 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund has crushed all that. A bright horizon of lifetime jobs and seemingly nonstop growth has suddenly dimmed. In its place: soaring unemployment, a more competitive role in the global economy and diminished expectations for a country that had worked hard...
...their own catering joints. The definition of what's respectable in South Korea has changed fast since economic collapse punched a hole in the Korean Dream. When the country was vaulting to economic success, parents aspired to get their sons into white-collar jobs at giant chaebol, or conglomerates, like Samsung. A year of life under the yoke of a humiliating $58 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund has crushed all that. A bright horizon of lifetime jobs and seemingly nonstop growth has suddenly dimmed. In its place: soaring unemployment, a more competitive role in the global economy...