Faced with stiff new competition in its core liquor business, the company turned to Belgian Interbrew, makers of Stella Artois. The Dutch firm had the technology and marketing skills to make OB competitive against the foreign brands flooding into the market. In the old Korea, giving up control to a foreigner was unthinkable. Japan's 35-year colonial rule soured Koreans on outsiders meddling in their economy. After the war, Korea Inc.'s success became a source of immense national pride, as well as a yardstick of independence. Park Yongmaan, one of six sons of Doosan's founder and a top executive at the $5 billion-a-year company, says that kind of thinking doesn't work in the new global marketplace. He insists that reviving the OB brand with foreign help was a sound business decision. "That is patriotism," Park says. "If I'd stuck to the traditional rules of business in Korea, maybe I'd be in bad shape." Park is an exception to Korea's staid corporate culture. Instead of the usual plush suite, his office is plunked in a corner of a busy room where Doosan employees work the phones and fax machines. Stacks of compact discs line the wall--classical, jazz and popular--and there's a pair of sleek black Tannoy speakers across from his desk. The difference in his approach is more than just a question of style, however. Armed with an MBA from Boston University, Park prefers to judge Doosan's performance by American benchmarks like cash flow and return on equity. More than a year before the Asian crisis hit, his company brought in consultants McKinsey & Co. to help Doosan sell off side businesses. At the time, his corporate friends thought he was mad. Now, he says, "Many people come to ask me to share my experiences." Until recently, Korea Inc. didn't seem to need much help. Its big conglomerates, the chaebol, had lifted the country into the ranks of the rich advanced economies in the space of a generation. At the end of the war with the North in 1953, South Korea was broke and mostly agrarian, with few resources or markets to speak of. Koreans started exporting cheap textiles, wigs and toys in the 1960s, then embarked on a massive push into heavy industry a decade later. By the 1980s, the country was churning out ultra-sophisticated 64K memory chips, only the third country in the world (after the U.S. and Japan) to do so. Two years ago, Korea became the first Asian nation after Japan to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the so-called rich countries' club. It looked too good to be true--and it was. The Asian crisis exposed the cracks in a system built on huge debt, endless expansion and limitless export markets. In Korea, size did matter. Getting on the Federation of Korean Industry's annual list of the top 30 chaebol meant you were too big to fail. That opened the door to more cheap financing and even lunch with the president of the republic--businesses expanded just to make the list. But when overproduction and debt spun out of control last year, foreign banks pulled the plug. In December, the world's 11th largest economy had to go hat-in-hand to the International Monetary Fund for a record $58 billion rescue package. Many Koreans hoped that would mark the end of an era for the chaebol, widely blamed for the economic mess. So far, however, most of them have shown little inclination to whittle down their massive empires. Only the biggest one, Hyundai, has moved to cut its bloated workforce. President Kim has extracted pledges from the top five--Hyundai, Samsung, LG, Daewoo and SK--to clean up their balance sheets and introduce more transparent accounting. But the chaebol have waited out previous efforts to tame them, and they could still gum up Kim's reforms. The dilemma for the President is that making the chaebol leaner and meaner will drive up Korea's unemployment rate, already at a record 9%. -Warren G, DRU Hill, Graham Bonnet, Boyz List, Boston Kickout, Areosmith,Shawn Colvin, FireHouse, Celine Dion, Rod Stewart, Toni Braxton, Kenny G, Mark Owen, Donna Lewis, Scolpions, Gloria Estefan, REm, Suede, Enya, Take That...n' HUFSan