Chaebol played a key role in developing new industries, markets, and export production, helping make South Korea one of the Four Asian Tigers. Although South Korea's major industrial programs did not begin until the early 1960s, the origins of the country's entrepreneurial elite were found in the political economy of the 1950s. Very few Koreans had owned or managed larger corporations during the Japanese colonial period. After the departure of the Japanese in 1945, some Korean businessmen obtained the assets of some of the Japanese firms, a number of which grew into the chaebol of the 1990s. The companies, as well
Internet censorship in South Korea account operated by the North. In January 2011, a South Korean man was arrested for praising North Korea through social networking sites. South Korean president Lee Myung-bak's year 2011 policies include cracking down on pro-North Korean comments on social network sites like Facebook and Twitter. Reporters Without Borders noted that the government "has intensified" its campaign to censor pro-North Korea material in 2012, as well. The Government of South Korea practiced censorship of gay-content websites from 2001 to 2003, through its "Information and Communications Ethics Committee" (정보통신윤리위원회), an official organ of the Ministry of Information and Communication, under its category