As Hyun-Kyu Han said, the current East Asian financial and economic fiasco cannot be simply explained as a cycle. However, I do not think this is due to inefficiencies of the real estate market.
Inefficiencies do exist, and they exacerbate the problems.
The latter might have contributed, but more important factors must have been government decision to deflate the land price. It started around 1988, and employed all conceivable means including direct price control, lending control, and significant increases on land-related taxes. Tax increases were powerful in depressing land price. It was a conscious decision of the government. At that time, the government was kept saying that the fall in land price would not affect the economy adversely.