ABSTRACT
During the 1950s and 1960s, firms in the United Kingdom and the United States were by far the biggest investors in other countries. In the early 1970s German and Japanese firms emerged as new big foreign investors.l Since the mid-1980s, however, firms based in LDCs, and especially those based in the NICs, have also emerged as significant overseas investors by increasing their production in other LDCs and, in a few instances, in developed countries.2 Overseas investment by firms from LDCs was US$ 6 billion in 1988, US$ 10 billion in 1989, US$ 10 billion in 1990, US$ 7 billion in 1991 and US$ 9 billion in 1992 (UN 1994: 12). Since the mid-1980s, manufacturing firms from developing countries and NICs have entered international markets in large and growing numbers. Korean firms are no exception.
