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.
Economy of South Korea Economy of South Korea The economy of South Korea is the 4th largest in Asia and the 11th largest in the world. It is a mixed economy dominated by family-owned conglomerates called chaebols, however, the dominance of the chaebol is unlikely to last and at engenders risk of slowing down the transformation of Korean economy for the benefit of future generations. South Korea is known for its spectacular rise from one of the poorest countries in the world to a developed, high-income country in just a few generations. This economic growth is called by some a miracle, and described as