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.
1985 in South Korea were briefly reunited. Economy Unemployment rate was kept around 4%. Construction for the upcoming Olympics contributed to a sagging economy. Hyundai motor cars were selling well but catering to a low-priced market. South Korean shipbuilding and overseas construction suffered. The Kukje Group, South Korea’s seventh largest conglomerate, which operated the largest single footwear factory in the world, collapsed. The government had a target of 7.5% growth in GDP but had to scale that down to 5%. South Korea had an accumulative foreign debt of around $45 billion, most of which was owed to Japan. 1985 in South Korea Events from