The families with a controlling interest drag their feet. The workers revolt.
Foreign investors lose their nerve.
Korea Inc. The scandal could not have come at a worse time, and in South Korea, that's saying something. Just three months ago, President Kim Dae Jung appointed Jin Nyum as Minister for Finance and Economy. The appointment came with a promise to sort out the economy's intractable problems, rhetoric geared to inspire confidence in investors fed up with the government's irresolute handling of the country's corporate-sector crisis. Most troubling was its apparent unwillingness to force the Chung family, which controls the sprawling Hyundai chaebol, to solve the liquidity crunch plaguing many of its affiliated companies. But there was also a stalemate in efforts to get creditors to close down insolvent companies that have been under government-subsidized workout programs since the 1998 Asian economic meltdown.