Description
As of 2020 South Korea has 14 firms listed on the global Fortune 500, including Samsung, Hyundai, SK, POSCO and LG. The country along with Japan is also one of the only two countries in Asia that are members of the OECD and its Development Assistance Committee (DAC) simultaneously. Furthermore, Korea boasts of its membership in the seven-country 50-30 Club (countries with a population of more than 50 million and a GDP of $30,000 per capita). However, unlike its official status as one of the most developed economies in the world, it still suffers from the backward struggle between the state and the family firms over the issue of property rights and family successions. The corporate governance issue has damaged the reputation of Korean chaebols (family conglomerates) for many decades as founders, and their families had been imprisoned and/or fined for violating inheritance tax laws and related laws associated with the issue of protecting their family ties. The democratically elected governments in Korea since 1987 have tried to reform the chaebol governance structures to ease asset concentration by family members, although many of those have failed due to corruptive practices between the state and the chaebol. This book spells out the current governance problems within the chaebol, state reform policies and both success and failures of the reforms. It was originally published as a special issue of the Asia Pacific Business Review.
Table of Contents
1 Inertia: Stalled governance reforms in the Korean chaebols amid economic maturation
Ingyu Oh, Chris Rowley and Yong Wook Jun
2 The end of rent sharing: corporate governance reforms in South Korea
Ingyu Oh, Soon Suk Yoon and Hyo Jin Kim
3 Successors’ discretion and corporate restructuring in family firms in South Korea: from an institutional perspective
JungYun Han
4 The shadow of a departing CEO: outsider succession and strategic change in a business group
Changsu Kim, Jong-Hun Park, Jiyoon Kim and Youngjoo Lee
5 Remains on the board: outside directors’ behaviour and their survival chance in Korean firms
Taeyoung Yoo and Yunsung Koh
6 Transforming Korean business? Foreign acquisition, governance and management after the 1997 Asian crisis
Robert Fitzgerald and Ji Woong Kang
