Korean for wealth clan, the chaebol and the zaibatsu share the same Chinese characters.
The Korean word chaebol (재벌) combines two Sino-Korean characters: chae (財), meaning wealth, and bol (벌), meaning clan or faction.1 The same two Chinese characters, read in Japanese, produce the word zaibatsu. The term first appeared in English text in 1972.2
Chaebols emerged during the presidency of Park Chung-hee, who from 1961 channeled government financing, tax breaks, and loan guarantees to a small number of family-controlled conglomerates in exchange for meeting industrial targets.3
Samsung, founded as a grocery trading store in 1938, grew into a conglomerate spanning electronics, construction, and finance. By 2019, Samsung's revenue alone was worth roughly seventeen percent of South Korean GDP.4 The top four chaebols (Samsung, SK, Hyundai, and LG) together accounted for about forty percent of GDP by 2023.
The chaebol system delivered extraordinary economic growth, contributing to what economists called the Miracle on the Han River, the transformation of South Korea from one of the world's poorest countries in the 1960s to a top-ten global economy. The concentration of power also produced chronic corruption, with several chaebol leaders convicted of bribery involving sitting presidents.5
Promotion within chaebols was rarely merit-based. Advancement followed age and tenure, reflecting Confucian hierarchies. Most executives were considerably older than their employees, and workers who did not reach senior management by age fifty were commonly expected to resign.6