Chaebol General Motors and Renault. The chaebol debts were not only to state industrial banks but also to independent banks and their own financial services subsidiaries. The scale of the loan defaults meant that banks could neither foreclose nor write off bad loans without themselves collapsing, so the failure to service these debts quickly caused a systemic banking crisis, and South Korea turned to the IMF for assistance. The most spectacular example came in mid-1999, with the collapse of the Daewoo Group, which had some US$80 billion in unpaid debt. At the time, it was the largest corporate bankruptcy in history.
Mongolians in South Korea Mongolians in South Korea Mongolians in South Korea form the world's largest population of Mongolian citizens abroad. By 2003, there were already 20,000 Mongolians working in South Korea, making their population larger than the combined total of Mongolian Americans, Mongolians in Japan, and Mongolians in Europe. Five years later, their population had grown by 65% to an estimated 33,000 individuals, or 1.2% of the entire Mongolian population. The government of South Korea estimates that one out of every two urban households in Mongolia has a family member working in South Korea. According to South Korean government figures, 40% are residing