The Costs and Benefits of Korean Conglomerates to the Korean Economy
It is believed that South Korea’s economy was agricultural by the mid-20th century. However, nowadays South Korea is the one of the Four Asian Tigers. What helped Korean economy to develop so fast and so effectively? A key role of developing Korean market has chaebol. This term was first used in the 1984. “Chaebol” means “monopoly” in Korean and it is a business conglomerated structure controlled by one family who has power in all operations. The chaebol is usually a large company, consisting of a group of small companies. The chaebol are often compared with Japanese keiretsu but they have fundamental differences. Firstly, keiretsu are usually run by professional managers while chaebol are controlled by their founding families. Secondly, chaebol’s ownership is always centralized by contrast with keiretsu. The Korean chaebol such as Samsung and LG Group are known worldwide and their products are used everywhere. The Korean conglomerates are expanding their influence taking more and more fields of manufacture. Besides, some countries (for example, Russia) are thinking over the inheritance of Korean chaebol experience to modernize their economies. This phenomenon was called “chaebolization”.
Even though chaebol helped South Korea to become a developed country, some economists criticize the system for its negative impact on the Korean economy. Some specialists say, “The chaebols ate Korea”. My goal is to investigate all the advantages and disadvantages of Korean chaebol system for the Korean economy and to make a conclusion about conglomerates’ influence on the Korean economy.
To achieve this goal, I organized my work into three main sections, one of which has two ...
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...omy. It must be very difficult but some measures are required in order to reduce diversification of production and corruption inside the business, and to let small and medium businesses grow.
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Blaine Harden, former national correspondent and writer for the New York Times, delivers an agonizing and heartbreaking story of one man’s extremely conflicted life in a labor camp and an endeavor of escaping this place he grew up in. This man’s name is Shin Dong-hyuk. Together, Blaine Harden and Shin Dong-hyuk tell us the story of this man’s imprisonment and escape into South Korea and eventually, the United States, from North Korea. This biography that takes place from 1982-2011, reports to its readers on what is really going on in “one of the world’s darkest nations” (back cover of the book), that is run under a communist state and totalitarian dictatorship that was lead by Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, and currently lead by Kim-Jong un. In Escape from Camp 14, Shin shows us the adaptation of his life and how one man can truly evolve from an animal, into a real human being.
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The German and Chinese business hierarchies don’t only affect the way businesses are run but also affects what kind of products each country is able to specialize in. The lack of empowerment and innovation within the Chinese business structure makes it very hard for them to come up with new products and processes. However, having an obedient workforce allows them to excel at creating low cost, less complex, mass market products. The Germans focus on efficiency and technical knowledge helps them to successfully produce more complex products, but are seldom the first to market due to their low innovation and empowerment.
This response will focus on the key issue of fragmentation. In his book Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey, Michael E. Robinson wrote “Multiple interest groups resided within the bureaucracy and even divided the royal house” (p. 16). Arguably, Korea’s sovereignty was lost in large part, due to the lack of unity among different groups and faction. It was clear from the readings that some Korean individuals and groups prioritized their self-interests above their own country’s benefit. Nowhere was this most evident then the issue of national security.
Caraway, Bill. "A New Relationship." Korea in the Eye of Tiger. Copyscape, 16 Dec. 2006. Web.
The economy in North Korea operates under the Central Bank of the Democratic People’s of and it remains as one of the world’s last centrally planned systems. North Korea has a command economy and it is based on agriculture and natural resources. The government permits private farmers markets to sell a range of goods, they also allowed some private farming on an experimental ground. Although, agriculture has a decreasing role in the nation's economy there has been an increase in cultivated land projects, mechanization and the use of chemical fertilizers.
One worker reflected upon working conditions during an interview, stating: “Factory life during the rapid industrialization of South Korea throughout the 1970s and 1980s meant tight communal living quarters and a drastic shift in cultural norms for the millions of factory workers that fed the country 's growth.” Yet, at the same time, South Korea made strides in public infrastructure; for example, “there was an unprecedented increase in primary and secondary education from around 1975 to 1990”. Eventually, the more educated and powerful citizenry challenged the authority of the factory and government, and “in April of 1980, students participated in massive demonstrations... and labor pressure was on the rise”; by 1987 the government announced it would hold “direct and open presidential elections”. South Korea is not special in this - all developed nations have had similar developmental histories, like with the industrial revolution and its deplorable working conditions being a crutch for the west to progress as a society. These serve as a perfect examples of how the sweatshops of industrialization acted as a necessary step in a process that led to a better quality of life and form of
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The book I chose for this book review assignment is titled Korea Old and New: A History by author Carter J. Eckert along with other contributing authors Ki-baik Lee, Young Ick Lew, Michael Robinson and Edward W. Wagner. The book is published at Korea Institute, Harvard University in 1990. The book consists of 418 pages and it is more of a survey of Korean history and reference type of book, rather than selected readings on modern Korean politics. I chose this book because it is a complete survey of Korean history from the ancient Choson period up to the economic boom of the 1990's, a span of over 2000 years. Each chapter covers a different period, but they all share the same organization of describing the social, cultural, political, philosophical and scholarly aspects of the period in respective subsections. This made it easier to later refer to previous chapters and compare different periods in order to learn the comprehensive history of Korea.
The Samsung Company is one of the leading companies in the world today. It traces its roots back to 1938 when Lee Byung-chull started a small trading company in Su-dong, South Korea that specialized in selling goods around the city. Later, the company grew and expanded to Seoul in 1947. With the outbreak of the Korean War, the company weakened and as soon as the war ended, Lee expanded it into the largest woolen mill in Korea. The expansion continued and within the next three decades it had diversified into other bareas, including textile, food processing, securities, retail and insurance. Samsung entered electronic industry in the second half of the 1960s and formed four electronic divisions, namely Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Samsung Corning, Samsung Electronic Devices and Samsung Semiconductors and Telecommunications.