Korea's chaebol bounce back stronger than ever

The chaebol - the giant, family-run empires behind South Korea's economic miracle - have come back stronger than ever since the economic crisis of 1997-98 brought them to their knees.

That crisis exposed the conglomerates' excessive borrowing and size-is-all strategy.

'A key message of corporate campaigns was that major chaebol could do anything given sufficient cheap capital and abundant labour. Hence the chips-to-ships tagline used by Samsung,' said Neil Drewitt, a branding expert.

'Millions of dollars spent on name recognition were wasted as non-Korean consumers failed to understand what these companies did or what products they made,' he said.

From 1998, the Kim Dae-jung government forced the sprawling groups to divest and specialise in their core lines.

Businesses went under. In 1999, Daewoo Group became the world's biggest bankruptcy, under debts of US$80 billion.