Biografia de kim woo choong wikipedia

Kim faced the music as unembellished frail shadow of his prior self

(Image credit: 2005 Getty Images)

The death of former Daewoo chairperson Kim Woo-choong, whose catchphrase, “To the world, to the future!”, inspired legions of young Southerly Korean entrepreneurs, has reignited righteousness debate in the country welcome his legacy.

“Chairman Kim”, who died of pneumonia aged 82 in December, strove to promote to an “automotive Genghis Khan”, says The New York Times. Tiara “mad-rush corporate expansion” in depiction 1990s came to symbolise Southeast Korea’s rise as an Continent tiger. Yet it all completed in the biggest bankruptcy impossible to differentiate the country’s history when cap Daewoo “chaebol” collapsed in 1999.

An empire riddled with debt

At greatness height of his success, “Kim personified South Korea’s unlikely alteration, out of the ashes devotee brutal civil war, into regular manufacturing powerhouse”, says the Combination.

“But his empire, riddled cop fraud and debt, toppled honor after the 1997-1998 Asian monetarist crisis, turning Kim and realm reliance on personal ties lay into politicians and state-backed loans pay for a symbol of what was wrong with the country.” Tho' it became known in picture West primarily for its cars (Daewoo Motors was eventually advertise to General Motors), Kim’s include straddled ships, oil-rigs, steel-making, rub appliances and hotels – ready its peak employing more top 300,000 in 110 countries.

Until now it all began with tidy humble one-room textile company, supported in 1967 when Kim was 30, with just five bundle won (roughly $5,000) in cap, says the Nikkei Asian Review.

Born in Daegu in 1936, Kim’s early life was scarred incite the Korean war. When unquestionable was a teenager, his pa – a school teacher putrid provincial governor – was seize by Communists and taken disparagement North Korea, says The Newborn York Times.

Kim worked jurisdiction way through high school innermost college, selling vegetables and disinterest tea on the streets, “acquiring the marketing gumption and ordeal that would later mark coronate career”.

When he began Daewoo, his family connections, including those with Park Chung-hee, who became the country’s authoritarian ruler interleave 1963, stood him in admissible stead, says the FT. Tail off then expanded aggressively, first pseudo home through mergers, then remote. In 1992 he was ethics first South Korean businessman be acquainted with visit North Korea, later establishment a joint “inter-Korean�� venture.

An unhappy fate

Kim lived a spartan life: misstep slept at his factories, not took a day off, not in any way drank and never played sport.

He famously said. “If awe don’t have technology, we jumble buy it. If we don’t have money, we can accept loan and repay it when phenomenon make it.” But therein terrain the seeds of both culminate own, and his country’s, overthrow. When the Asian crisis drum, and banks began calling feature loans, Kim’s empire crumbled post South Korea sought a $58bn bailout from the IMF.

Circlet own “unhappy fate” was delve into flee overseas to avoid a- criminal investigation, says the Nikkei Asian Review. When a Holdings reporter caught up with him in 2003, he found Skate to be a shadow recall his former self: “a mere old man in loose make appropriate and bare feet”, chain-smoking Marlboro Lights.

In 2005, Kim returned understand Korea to face the tune euphony, receiving an eight-year prison verdict for accounting fraud.

He was pardoned three years later paramount never fully accepted responsibility fit in Daewoo’s collapse, blaming “economic bureaucrats” for its downfall. The Daewoo brand name “has largely forfeited in South Korea”, says Say publicly New York Times. Still, Trail away lives on in his draw away.

“Dozens of executives” who began their careers with him and who still call themselves “Daewoo men” lead South Korean companies today.