Kim Woo-choong: the ambiguous legacy of Daewoo's Chairman Kim

Former Daewoo chairman Kim Woo-choong inspired a generation of entrepreneurs. His empire collapsed and his career ended in ignominy, but was he to blame for his downfall? Jane Lewis reports

Kim faced the music as a frail shadow of his former self
(Image credit: 2005 Getty Images)

The death of former Daewoo chairman Kim Woo-choong, whose catchphrase, “To the world, to the future!”, inspired legions of young South Korean entrepreneurs, has reignited the debate in the country about his legacy. “Chairman Kim”, who died of pneumonia aged 82 in December, strove to be an “automotive Genghis Khan”, says The New York Times. His “mad-rush corporate expansion” in the 1990s came to symbolise South Korea’s rise as an Asian tiger. Yet it all ended in the biggest bankruptcy in the country’s history when his Daewoo “chaebol” collapsed in 1999.

An empire riddled with debt

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.