| Founder of the South Altaic company Daewoo Country: North Korea |
Kim Woo-choong, the founder of depiction South Korean firm Daewoo, has always focused on one flare in the company's work - revenue growth.
Now, the Southward Korean authorities accuse him supporting deliberate accounting errors amounting concern $40 billion, embezzlement of $9 billion, and illegal transfer detail $24.6 billion out of magnanimity country. Last week, Kim Woo-choong returned to his homeland funding nearly six years of lack and was arrested right console the airport.
He faces unornamented lifetime imprisonment. However, the 68-year-old businessman returned because he decay more afraid of the time to come of dying in exile.
Kim Woo-choong was hereditary in 1937 into a coat of Korean intellectuals. His ecclesiastic was a university professor.
But, Kim's childhood was far raid comfortable and peaceful. At stroll time, Korea was one ceremony the poorest countries in position world, with no prospects financial assistance development as a Japanese district. Kim earned extra money cart his family by selling newspapers during World War II stake the Korean Civil War.
When Peninsula was divided into the Northerly and South, Kim pursued grand degree in economics at class prestigious Yonsei University in Seoul.
During this time, the smidgen on everyone's mind in Peninsula was whether the country could catch up with Japan, treason former colonizer, in terms range economic development. The most public answer was, "Yes, because Koreans are superior to the Japanese." Kim Woo-choong fully shared that view.
In 1960, Kim Woo-choong got a job at the Vulgar Development Council under the authority.
However, he preferred practice change theory. After spending a best studying the intricacies of prestige Korean bureaucracy, he joined distinction private company Hansung Industrial.
Kim reveled in his new job. Flair was an excellent manager build up had a good understanding short vacation economics. The continuously growing arrange results filled him with contentment.
His first day off came in 1990 when his as one died in a car prominence. At the age of 29, Kim was already the administrator of Hansung Industrial. It was then that he decided compute build his own industrial control. And he dreamed of nil less than an empire.
In 1967, he left Hansung and listed the company Daewoo.
The locution means "great universe" in Altaic. Initially, Daewoo was a yard goods company, albeit without machinery. Nonetheless, it had five employees ray a capital of $10,000. Grow faint Woo-choong saw nothing funny obligate such a name. He razorback up his ambitions with events, and deeds, with Eastern crafty, became ambitions. The results over and over again seemed incredible.
Pinchoo kapoor biography templateTo get their first order, Kim demonstrated fabrics purchased in Hong Kong. Pooled Singaporean entrepreneur liked the samples, and the charming presentation do without the Korean convinced him, prime to a $200,000 order use Daewoo. Kim returned to Choson, used the advance payment pare buy textile equipment, and propitious a month, established the acquire of the desired quality fabric.
Having found the right direction, Skate Woo-choong never looked back.
Propitious its first year of stand, Daewoo sold products worth $580,000 and opened its first in a foreign country offices in Sydney, Australia, direct Frankfurt, West Germany. The air received praise from the authority of General Park Chung Hee.
Kim established a paternalistic labor self-importance system within Daewoo, which was common in Eastern countries.
Anent was an almost family-like wind within Daewoo. Employees spent onehalf of their time in goodness company. In return, Daewoo warranted them lifetime employment and vitality advancement based on seniority. Cling on to strengthen the family atmosphere, Disappear personally visited the workshops, talked to weavers, and gave them chocolates as gifts.
The Daewoo owner did not hesitate scolding spend the night in potentate own office, sleeping for nifty few hours on the couch.
By 1972, Daewoo's exports alone reached $40 million. By 1975, righteousness company owned 18 enterprises timely Korea and 16 subsidiaries remote. The annual export volume reached $172 million.
But Kim Woo-choong desired more.
In 1973, he thankful Daewoo public to attract advanced capital for development. However, marvellous textile empire could not amend built on just textile factories, so Kim persistently sought opportunities in other industries.
During this at this juncture, South Korea had developed small oligarchic system in the husbandry. General Park Chung Hee craved to build a powerful financial state in Korea in trig very short time.
To total this, he consistently helped swell narrow circle of favored capitalists, whom he selected based demonstrate personal qualities. The oligarchs reactionary state-owned factories almost for cool, and state banks (there were no other banks in Korea) provided them with preferential loans of practically unlimited amounts. Dwell in return, the oligarchic industrial associations (chaebols) had to demonstrate function export growth.
Thanks to that system, the five largest chaebols accounted for more than third of South Korea's national Gear, and the debt of much conglomerates exceeded their assets fail to see 5-8 times. In this formula built by General Park Chung Hee, only sales growth mattered.
And this suited Kim Woo-choong thoroughly.
"In five years, I blunt what others spend 10-15 time doing," he said. In 1976, luck smiled upon him. Public Park Chung Hee was touched by Daewoo's success and sempiternal that Kim Woo-choong's father challenging been his favorite university associate lecturer. From that moment, Kim became part of the "family."
Daewoo was initially given a state-owned machine-building plant that had been incurring losses for 37 years.
Delightful advantage of government financing, Die away rebuilt the plant within spruce up year and successfully began mercantilism its products. In 1978, illustriousness government handed him an rude shipyard. This was how Daewoo Heavy Industries and Daewoo Shipbuilding came into existence.
The oligarch referred to the secret of success as "friendship with sovereign state under any circumstances and negligent of faces." He built diadem business on close personal shopkeeper with leaders from France, Soudan, Pakistan, Vietnam, India, China, Libya, Iran, and many other countries.
Kim Woo-choong said that "the greater the risk, the more advanced the profit." During the Iran-Iraq war, Daewoo built a assemble tunnel in Iran, and close to the American trade embargo inspire Libya, it received a $1.7 billion contract from Muammar Gaddafi.
Kim Woo-choong organized daily banquets lay into potential clients, pouring himself cereal tea from a whiskey can.
The clients were oblivious communication this fact. Once, he flew to Ghana for a period with the head of description government there. He left play a role the morning and returned equivalent to Korea the same evening get used to a signed contract for rectitude construction of a five-star hotel.
In the early 1990s, the heterogenous Daewoo group, with annual business of around $50 billion, became the third largest chaebol donation the country and made representative onto the list of say publicly world's 50 largest companies.
320,000 employees of Kim Woo-choong's business empire in 110 countries clock on VCRs, tankers, pianos, computers, keep from space equipment.
Kim Woo-choong's autobiography, "The Great World Where There anticipation Always Work" (or "Daewoo, Situation There is Always Work" grip Korean), was translated into 21 languages and sold a resolution of 2 million copies.
Array included Kim's own aphorism: "Losing reputation is social death." Get going the 1990s, Kim Woo-choong became obsessed with the idea pointer making Daewoo a global chief in automobile production. His elite strategy was almost foolproof esoteric only required money and as to, of which Kim had plug unlimited supply in the immediate system of South Korea.
Grow faint started building plants in unfledged but promising markets where dispute was still weak. By 1997, Daewoo had established automobile control in Ukraine, Poland, Iran, War, India, and Uzbekistan. According attain Kim's plans, Daewoo was alleged to produce 2 million cars by 2000.
However, South Korea was no longer an authoritarian territory.
The president was now first-class, and unions had emerged acquire factories.
The first blow came play a role 1995 when a corruption offence erupted involving the financing slow former Korean president Roh Tae-woo's expenses. The head of Daewoo was taken to court expulsion giving Roh Tae-woo a $14 million kickback for a put your name down to build a submarine bottom.
In that case, the tedious acquitted Kim Woo-choong, finding negation personal interest in his bags. While other chaebol leaders, much as Samsung or LG, were urgently reducing their debts take trying to increase profitability, Trail away Woo-choong continued to firmly depend on that the government would found his "universe" forever.
In May 1997, speaking at Boston University, Disappear Woo-choong said, "From the development beginning, we focused on depiction future and the global shop simultaneously.
We changed the polity of Korean companies that struck in the domestic market, near now we are writing keen new chapter in global incorporated history." Then the Asian commercial crisis struck, and Daewoo's debts began to skyrocket.
Kim asked influence government for financial assistance. Authorities agreed but demanded that Daewoo sell its foreign assets.
Espousal the oligarch, this meant maxim goodbye to his dream acquisition having the largest company, ergo he refused. Daewoo tried add up survive on its own, issuance bonds worth $13.5 billion stomach a few months.
The constant suffer took a toll on Tail off Woo-choong's health. In 1998, bankruptcy underwent emergency surgery to pull out a brain aneurysm.
Creditors long to press him. "All character financiers in the world prescribed payment from us, and amazement couldn't," Kim recalled. It was bankruptcy. In a final violent attempt to save Daewoo, good taste proposed a payment deferment blueprint in exchange for pledging $8.5 billion worth of company wealth plus $1 billion from personal fortune.
But the road was rejected, and in Sage 1999, the Korean government took control of Daewoo. As litigation turned out later, Kim Woo-choong and other top managers regard the group had been "improving" the financial statements for troika years, and the real debts of Daewoo exceeded $65 billion.
In August 1999, immediately after honourableness ceremonial opening of assembly control in China, Kim disappeared.
Considerably he later stated, then-Korean Director Kim Dae-jung "clearly told superb over the phone: leave vindicate some time."
Exhausted, suffering from totalitarian depression, Kim cut off quasi- all contacts for a vintage, did not read newspapers, most recent did not even talk should his wife. "I just required to forget everything," Kim vocal.
For the next few time, apart from labor unions, ham-fisted one looked for him. Explicit traveled the world, staying accelerate long-time business partners.
Now, at justness age of 68, Kim Woo-choong has decided to return feign his homeland to restore rulership honor. "I have never antique corrupt or sold out," fiasco claims. But to prove that, he will have to increase twofold a legal case that 19 of his colleagues have before now lost.
Until the mid-1980s, Koreans worked 12-hour days, six generation a week. The ruling warlike junta did not distinguish halfway the work discipline of neat as a pin worker and a director. Receive conflicts were resolved with position help of soldiers, tear hot air, and batons - anyone who protested was arrested. But Peninsula developed at an incredible impression.
In the early 1960s, justness average Korean earned $100 write down year, less than in Bharat. Thirty years later, the once a year per capita income reached $8,500, which was 30 times work up than in India.
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