ABSTRACT
Beginning in the early 1970s and continuing through the mid-1990s, Korea was routinely mentioned as a textbook example of an economic miracle. Aggressive Korean companies captured an increasingly larger share of key global markets including automobiles, electronics, semiconductors, shipbuilding, construction, and textiles. With a highly motivated and disciplined workforce, borrowed technology, government funding, corporate entrepreneurial talent, and protected local markets, Korean industry thrived. Then, in 1997, the bottom fell out of the Korean financial markets, as it did in several other Asian countries, and a decade of economic progress disappeared overnight.
