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.
Smoking in South Korea Smoking in South Korea Smoking in South Korea is similar to other developed countries in the OECD, with a daily smoking rate of 19.9% in 2013 compared to 20.9% in Germany and 19.3% in Japan. However, male smoking is among the highest at 36.2% while female smoking by far the lowest at 4.3%. The South Korean government aims to take down male smoking rate to the OECD average of 29% by 2020 by making the country one of the world's most difficult places to smoke, using a combination of significant price hikes, mandatory warning photos on cigarette packs, advertising bans,