Word: korean
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...Korea's astounding economic miracle. Aside from cars, group companies made trucks, ships and TV sets, brokered stocks and built buildings. The Daewoo-owned Hilton Hotel in Seoul even had a pretty good Italian restaurant. More important, Daewoo invested in industries, like cars, perceived as core to the Korean economy. (See the 50 worst cars of all time...
...consequences of a Daewoo failure looked catastrophic. Daewoo, it turned out, had about $75 billion in debt and other liabilities - a hit the Korean banking sector could ill afford. The banks had just been yanked from the abyss by a government bailout (sound familiar?) made necessary by the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis. And the timing also could not have been worse: the economy was emerging from its deepest recession since Korea's accelerated growth began in the early 1960s. Arguably, a Daewoo collapse was more threatening to Korea than, say, a GM bankruptcy would be to the U.S., simply...
...Well, not really. The Korean economy didn't fall into the Pacific after Daewoo's tumble as many had feared. Korea's GDP grew 9.5% the year Daewoo failed, and 8.5% the next. (See pictures of the global financial crisis...
...fact, it's not hard to argue that the Korean economy was better off with Daewoo out of the way. The persistence of the belief that Daewoo and the other giant Korean conglomerates were too big to fail led many bankers and bond investors to toss billions at them no matter how loony their business plans or unprofitable their projects. Money was wasted in unproductive ways. Once the too-big-to-fail perception was finally dispelled and the large conglomerates were no longer considered the safest investments, bankers and investors, looking for new opportunities, more readily financed small firms, entrepreneurs...
...World of Warcraft), because the 60 or more hours many admit to playing each week makes the cost per hour infinitesimally small. Recently, “microtransaction” online games, which are free to play but charge players small amounts for in-game items and upgrades, like the Korean games Cabal Online or MapleStory, have been making inroads into western markets, and are relatively recession-friendly in that players can choose exactly how much to spend...