ABSTRACT
The family tableau emerged from the demanding tradition of a Confucian male-dominated society where nothing counted for more than loyalty to the patriarch. At 5:30 a.m. on a Seoul morning, summer 1992, Chung Ju Yung, at 76 South Korea’s richest man and a candidate for president, hosted five of his six living sons, the brother-in-law of a son who had killed himself plus the son of a brother who had died 30 years before. Wearing funereal dark suits and white shirts, squeezed into uncomfortable wicker chairs, they huddled around a small table for a hasty breakfast of tea, fresh fruit and rice. The old man went easy on kimchi, the spicy pickled cabbage that was a national staple — unlike most Koreans, he did not like hot food.
