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.
Korea Tungsten Company Korea Tungsten Company Korea Tungsten Company (KTC, Korean: 대한중석, pronounced "daehan jungsuk", Hanja: 大韓重石) was a major South Korean manufacturer of tungsten cutting tools, tungsten powder, and related metal-cutting products. It was the 28th-largest chaebol by asset with subsidiaries such as Korea Tungsten Construction and Korea Sintered Metal. With the national government, KTC also established POSCO, which is now the world's second largest steelmaker by output. In 1998, Keo-Pyung, then KTC's proprietor, defaulted on its loans and was declared bankrupt by its main creditor, CHB Bank. On May 12, 1998, Keo-Pyung announced that it would shed 14 of its 19