Daewoo
Daewoo was a business
conglomerate of South Korea. The company was founded on March 22, 1967 by Kim
Woo-choong. Thanks to the policies and financial aid of the Park Chung-hee
government, it quickly diversified as a manufacturer of automobiles, ships and electronic
components. At its best it was the second largest conglomerate in the country,
behind Hyundai. Its diversification led to great indebtedness, unsustainable
after the outbreak of the Asian financial crisis in the 1990s. After declaring
bankruptcy in 1999, Kim Dae-jung's executive dismantled the group and sold its
subsidiaries to various companies to avoid collapse of the national economy.
Woo-choong fled the Justice and did not return to Korea until 2005, to be
sentenced to 10 years in prison for accounting fraud and capital evasion.
Our company offers the Daewoo
compliance certificate for this vehicle through our website.
The most well-known Daewoo firm
worldwide, its car brand, was renamed in 2002 as GM Daewoo, when General Motors
took control. It disappeared in 2011 after they acquired the last of its
business units (Daewoo Motors) and renamed it GM Korea. Although some companies
are still called Daewoo, none is today linked to the historic group. Daewoo was
founded on March 22, 1967 by Kim Woo-choong, a young entrepreneur with a degree
in Economics from Yonsei University in Seoul. Woo-choong started up a small
textile company composed of five employees, for which he applied for a loan
worth 5 million won (9,000 euros at the time change). However, Daewoo was able
to grow rapidly thanks to the economic policies of the Park Chung-hee
government, which wanted to develop a model of large business conglomerates
(chaebol) to revive the economy of South Korea.
Thanks to the South Korean
administration, Daewoo benefited from public aid and contracts in different
sectors. In its early years it concentrated on the textile business, but in
1973 the government forced Daewoo to diversify to obtain subsidies. One of his
first actions was to acquire the Okpo shipyard. Since then, the firm took over
bankrupt companies to rescue them at the request of the administration,
entering into businesses as diverse as construction or the arms industry.
The Daewoo Certificate of
Conformity is available to all Daewoo built in the European Union.
In 1978 Daewoo took control of
the automobile manufacturer Saehan Motors which he renamed Daewoo Motors,
competing directly with Hyundai, the other major national chaebol. To gain a
foothold in the market, he signed a joint venture with General Motors in 1983
and began manufacturing low-cost utilities inspired by other models, such as
the Daewoo LeMans (Opel Kadett) or the Daewoo Tico (Suzuki Alto).
liberalization of the South Korean economy began a large international
expansion, offering its manufacturing services with low cost and cheap labor,
especially in the manufacture of merchant ships, ships and oil tankers. On the
other hand, Daewoo Motors arrived in Australia and the United States and became
the sixth car manufacturer in the world after the fall of the Berlin Wall,
opening subsidiaries in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The confidence in
its expansion led him in 1992 to buy the participation of General Motors in the
automotive subsidiary, converting it into an independent company.
During the 1990s, it registered
excessive indebtedness, the result of diversification and a vertical
integration system managed as a family business.
The situation did not
change with the arrival of democracy in South Korea, as Kim Woo-choong was
elected president of the Federation of Korean Industries, a consortium of major
chaebol, and thus maintained his influence. At that time, Daewoo was the second
conglomerate in the country, with twenty firms under its control and a
workforce of 320,000 employees worldwide.
What do I need to get my Daewoo
COC? Information available on our website.
In 1997, the Asian financial
crisis broke out, affecting the economies of the so-called "four Asian
dragons", including South Korea. The President of the Government, Kim
Dae-jung, decreed a package of reforms to reduce the deficit, and bank loans
were reduced when the International Monetary Fund urged to eliminate
cross-guarantees. Daewoo was one of the companies that took the most debt to
face its expansion and could not return the credits it requested.
A year later, the group
recognized losses worth 369 million euros but, unlike other conglomerates with
economic problems such as Hyundai or Samsung, continued to buy companies and
gave up on disposing of deficit assets. The financial problems of the chaebol
threatened even to collapse the South Korean economy, since it represented then
5% of gross domestic product and employed 150,000 South Koreans.
The Dae-jung government studied
intervention measures but refused to rescue it, which was interpreted as a
warning to other troubled South Korean conglomerates to speed up their
divestments. Daewoo filled the short-term bond market with an interest of up to
30%, but this measure failed and could not restructure its debt. In the end it
was dismantled on August 26, 1999 and the administration auctioned the deficit
subsidiaries to national and international investors to compensate the
creditors. Daewoo Motors declared bankruptcy in 2000 and within a few months
General Motors took control of it. The founder of Daewoo, Kim Woo-choong, fled
to France in November 1999 to avoid being tried for embezzlement of funds and
tax fraud, by falsifying the group's accounts to access new loans and hide
their insolvency. Woo-choong did not return until 2005, being sentenced to 10
years in prison and a fine of 22,000 million dollars.