Kim Woo-choong

Daewoo. Kim founded Daewoo as a small textile trader in 1967 and expanded at astonishing speed into shipbuilding, cars and electronics, often by taking over failing firms with state encouragement and borrowed money. His book about the world being wide and full of work was a bestseller. Daewoo collapsed under its debts in 1999, one of the largest corporate failures of its time, and he was later convicted of accounting fraud. He died in 2019.