ABSTRACT
The names of the biggest Japanese zaibatsu, Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Sumitomo, to cite the best known, were household words among Koreans as much as Japanese — the more so since the Japanese while ruling Korea did not permit Koreans to engage in many forms of business and industry. Despite the near-universal hatred of the Japanese, Koreans also imitated their conquerors, never more so than in business. How else could they hope to avenge the wrongs of colonialism, to prove Korean superiority? The phenomenon of one man amassing an industrial empire was, in the Korean context, less than unique. In the generation after the Korean War, scores of individual entrepreneurs rose to command companies, groups, commercial kingdoms. If the Japanese could have their zaibatsu, so could the Koreans.
