What are chaebols? What is the system behind South Korea's powerful companies? Scholar and author Dr. Sung-Yoon Lee, a fellow at the Wilson Center and former Kim Koo-Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Studies and Assistant Professor, the Fletcher School, Tufts University, explains chaebols are both a huge part of South Korea's economy and "traditional
crony capitalism...very much a feature of South Korea's economic success story, yet it still casts a shadow over the South Korean economy because the chaebol tend to bully and take over the roles of small and medium enterprises. Small and medium enterprises employ far more laborers than the chaebol, do but the chaebol account for the majority of the output and revenue, so this is an imbalance that needs to be addressed."
