Question: What was a weakness of South Korea's first 20 years of growth?
About the article "South Korea", section "Environment".

Candidate passages:
South Korea's market economy ranks 15th in the world by nominal GDP and 12th by purchasing power parity (PPP), identifying it as one of the G-20 major economies.
It is a developed country with a high-income economy and is the most industrialised member country of the OECD.
South Korea is the only developed country to have been included in the group of Next Eleven countries.
South Korea's economy was one of the world's fastest-growing from the early 1960s to the late 1990s, and South Korea is still one of the fastest-growing developed countries in the 2000s, along with Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan, the other three Asian Tigers.
South Koreans refer to this growth as the Miracle on the Han River.
The South Korean economy is heavily dependent on international trade, and in 2010, South Korea was the sixth largest exporter and tenth largest importer in the world.
The South Korean economy and especially trade are dominated by a few large Chaebol, which overshadow the rest of the economy and are a source of massive corruption.
South Korea hosted the fifth G20 summit in its capital city, Seoul, in November 2010.
The two-day summit was expected to boost South Korea's economy by 31 trillion won, or 4% of South Korea's 2010 GDP, in economic effects, and create over 160,000 jobs in South Korea.
It may also help improve the country's sovereign credit rating.
Despite the South Korean economy's high growth potential and apparent structural stability, the country suffers damage to its credit rating in the stock market because of the belligerence of North Korea in times of deep military crises, which has an adverse effect on South Korean financial markets.
The International Monetary Fund compliments the resilience of the South Korean economy against various economic crises, citing low state debt and high fiscal reserves that can quickly be mobilized to address financial emergencies.
Although it was severely harmed by the Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s, the South Korean economy managed a rapid recovery and subsequently tripled its GDP.
Furthermore, South Korea was one of the few developed countries that were able to avoid a recession during the global financial crisis.
Its economic growth rate reached 6.2 percent in 2010 (the fastest growth for eight years after significant growth by 7.2 percent in 2002), a sharp recovery from economic growth rates of 2.3% in 2008 and 0.2% in 2009, when the global financial crisis hit.
The unemployment rate in South Korea also remained low in 2009, at 3.6%. 
Korea's economy moved away from the centrally planned, government-directed investment model toward a more market-oriented one.
These economic reforms, pushed by President Kim Dae-jung, helped Korea maintain one of Asia's few expanding economies, with growth rates of 10.8% in 1999 and 9.2% in 2000.
Growth fell back to 3.3% in 2001 because of the slowing global economy, falling exports, and the perception that much-needed corporate and financial reforms have stalled.
After the bounce back from the crisis of the late nineties, the economy continued strong growth in 2000 with a GDP growth of 9.08%.
But the South Korean economy was affected by the September 11 Attacks, causing growth to fall back to 3.8% in 2001 also because of the slowing global economy, falling exports, and the perception that corporate and financial reforms had stalled.
Thanks to industrialization GDP per hour worked (labor output) more than tripled from US$2.80 in 1963 to US$10.00 in 1989.
More recently the economy stabilized and maintain a growth rate between 4-5% from 2003 onwards.
Led by industry and construction, growth in 2002 was 5.8%, despite anemic global growth.
The restructuring of Korean conglomerates ("chaebols"), bank privatization, and the creation of a more liberalized economy—with a mechanism for bankrupt firms to exit the market—remain Korea's most important unfinished reform tasks.
Growth slowed again in 2004, but production expanded 5% in 2006, due to popular demand for key export products such as HDTVs and mobile phones.
Like most industrialized economies, Korea suffered significant setbacks during the late-2000s recession that began in 2007.
Growth fell by 3.4% in the fourth quarter of 2008 from the previous quarter, the first negative quarterly growth in 10 years, with year on year quarterly growth continuing to be negative into 2009.
Most sectors of the economy reported declines, with manufacturing dropping 25.6% as of January 2009, and consumer goods sales dropping 3.1%.
Exports in autos and semiconductors, two critical pillars of the economy, shrank 55.9% and 46.9% respectively, while exports overall fell by a record 33.8% in January, and 18.3% in February 2009 year on year.
As in the 1997 crisis, Korea's currency also experienced massive fluctuations, declining by 34% against the dollar.
Annual growth in the economy slowed to 2.3% in 2008, and was expected to drop to as low as -4.5% by Goldman Sachs, but South Korea was able to limit the downturn to a near standstill at 0.2% in 2009.
Despite the global financial crisis, the South Korean economy, helped by timely stimulus measures and strong domestic consumption of products that compensated for a drop in exports, was able to avoid a recession unlike most industrialized economies, posting positive economic growth for two consecutive years of the crisis.
In 2010, South Korea made a strong economic rebound with a growth rate of 6.1%, signaling a return of the economy to pre-crisis levels.
South Korea's export has recorded $424 billion in the first eleven months of the year 2010, already higher than its export in the whole year of 2008.
The South Korean economy of the 21st century, as a Next Eleven economy, is expected to grow from 3.9% to 4.2% annually between 2011 and 2030, similar to growth rates of developing countries such as Brazil or Russia.
The South Korean government signed the Korea-Australia Free Trade Agreement (KAFTA) on December 5, 2013, with the Australian government seeking to benefit its numerous industries—including automotive, services, and resources and energy—and position itself alongside competitors, such as the US and ASEAN.
South Korea is Australia’s third largest export market and fourth largest trading partner with a 2012 trade value of A$32 billion.
The agreement contains an Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) clause that permits legal action from South Korean corporations against the Australian government if their trade rights are infringed upon.  
For the first half of the 1990s, the South Korean economy continued a stable and strong growth in both private consumption and GDP.
Things changed quickly in 1997 with the Asian Financial crisis.
After several other Asian currencies were attacked by speculators, the Korean won started to heavily depreciate in October 1997.
The problem was exacerbated by the problem of non-performing loans at many of Korea's merchant banks.
By December 1997, the IMF had approved a USD $21 billion loan, that would be part of a USD $58.4 billion bailout plan.
By January 1998, the government had shut down a third of Korea's merchant banks.
Throughout 1998, Korea's economy would continue to shrink quarterly at an average rate of -6.65%.
Korean chaebol Daewoo became a casualty of the crisis as it was dismantled by the government in 1999 due to debt problems.
American company General Motors managed to purchase the motors division.
Indian conglomerate Tata Group, purchased the trucks and heavy vehicles division of Daewoo.
Actions by the South Korean government and debt swaps by international lenders contained the country's financial problems.
Much of South Korea's recovery from the Asian Financial Crisis can be attributed to labor adjustments (i.e.
a dynamic and productive labor market with flexible wage rates) and alternative funding sources.
By the first quarter of 1999, GDP growth had risen to 5.4%, and strong growth thereafter combined with deflationary pressure on the currency lead to a yearly growth of 10.5%.
In December 1999, president Kim Dae-jung declared the currency crisis over. 
Work on the line began already in October 1959.
Following the 1961 coup, the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction started South Korea's first five-year plan, which included a construction program to complete the railway network, to foster economic growth.
The line from Neunggok on the Gyeongui Line to Uijeongbu on the Gyeongwon Line was incorporated into the program and was completed on August 20, 1963. 
Korea's first group of business, political and academic elites was the Japanese Generation, or specifically, those Koreans born during the waning days of the Joseon dynasty or the early years of the colonial period, who were trained and educated exclusively in Japan at elite universities and military academies during the Japanese colonial period from 1910 to 1945.
This first generation of Korean overseas students, who as returnees to their native country after Korea's liberation from Japan in 1945, were called upon to form the first sovereign Korean state in modern history.
Their studies in administration, agriculture and engineering and other subjects that the Japanese had deemed useful in the creation of a Korean administrative sub-class, were quickly put to use in filling the administrative void and power vacuum left behind by the departing Japanese colonial government.
By quickly assuming key technical and administrative positions in South Korea's fledgling government and bureaucracy, as well as assuming leadership in its post-colonial military and police force at the behest of U.S. trusteeship, Korea's Japanese Generation proved themselves as quick learners adept at jump starting Korea's ancient tradition of self-rule.
These Koreans were also instrumental in forming, creating and leading Korea's post-war governmental institutions and driving its export-oriented economy well into the 1990s.
Today, near the end of the first decade of the 21st century, while a majority of the Japanese Generation has long since retired or passed on, their legacy continues to drive Korea's sociopolitical and economic scene for the time being, albeit less and less so.
Meanwhile, increasing numbers of overseas educated Koreans—this time trained in the West and fluent in English—continue to return to Korea after their studies in overwhelming numbers seeking commensurate positions in Korea's public and private sector in order to establish their own imprimatur on Korean society based on their own experiences and learning acquired during their stints abroad as students studying at some of the best universities in America and Europe.
The overall impact of such disparate experiences in terms of influencing Korea's sociopolitical geography and economic millieu for the future is debatable though, as the current generation differs substantially from its predecessors.
Specifically, Korea's current generation, although better educated and more privileged in many respects, lack a defining and unifying experience for their generation.
The Japanese Generation, on the other hand was largely successful in terms of acting as Korea's legitimate power elites because they were able to quickly coalesce by capitalizing on the defining and unifying experience of their generation, which was the strong resentment of Korea's poverty and low status attributed to Japanese colonization and the Korean War.
As a result, that generation felt an overwhelming obligation to put Korea on the right track at all costs, in order to prevent another return to an abysmal state.