Samsung still accounts for 20 to 25 per cent of the countrys entire GDP, and Hyundai up to 15 per cent.
It remains politically suicidal for a government, given the huge residual power in the chaebol families, to seek to engineer their break-up.
The alternatives are necessarily longer term. They include at one end, the need to stress the value of innovation and creativity, to seek to change steadily the education system - the painful rote-learning structure.
And at another end, they include national and local governments combining with finance houses and others to encourage and nurture start-ups.
But the wave of start-ups is still gathering momentum in Korea, and growing numbers of smart young graduates are choosing to defy their parents and head for that world of risk and excitement rather than chaebol security.
