Chaebol of South Korea's top conglomerates has decreased from 2012 to 2015. Not only did their profits stop increasing, but certain chaebols such as LG, have been making losses and losing talent. Some chaebol are one large corporation while others have broken up into loosely connected groups of separate companies sharing a common name. Even in the latter case, each is almost always owned, controlled, or managed by the same family group. South Korea's chaebol are often compared with Japan's keiretsu business groupings, the successors to the pre-war zaibatsu. While the "chaebol" are similar to the "zaibatsu" (the words are cognates,
South Korea alliance between the United States and Japan. Korea and Japan have had difficult relations since ancient times, but also significant cultural exchange, with Korea acting as the gateway between Asia and Japan. Contemporary perceptions of Japan are still largely defined by Japan's 35 year colonization of Korea in the 20th century, which is generally regarded in South Korea as having been very negative. Japan is today South Korea's third largest trading partner, with 12% ($46 billion) of exports in 2016. There were no formal diplomatic ties between South Korea and Japan directly after independence the end of World War II