South Korea

South Korea's economy is dominated by chaebols — family-controlled conglomerates (Samsung, Hyundai, SK, LG) that collectively generate revenue equivalent to roughly 60% of GDP. This concentration is not a market failure but deliberate industrial policy: the Park Chung-hee military government selected and subsidised specific firms to drive export-led industrialisation from the 1960s onward, creating national champions at the cost of competitive markets. Samsung alone accounts for roughly 20% of the Korean stock market's capitalisation. The political system oscillates between progressive and conservative presidencies, each of which attempts to reform chaebol governance and each of which fails because the chaebols are structurally indispensable. Four of South Korea's last six presidents have been imprisoned or impeached, suggesting that the presidency is a high-mortality ecological niche — individuals are consumed by a political environment more powerful than any single occupant.