Song Ho-geun: The road not taken

With the emergence of AlphaGo in 2016, the arrival of the "Fourth Industrial Revolution" and the replacement of humans by robots became a reality. Meanwhile, on February 17, 2017, Hanjin Shipping was declared bankrupt. It took only six months for this giant shipping company, with a 40-year history, to disappear after entering court receivership in September 2016. This event starkly reveals the crisis facing the South Korean economy, which is centered on heavy industries such as shipbuilding and petrochemicals. Faced with the whirlwind of change—the arrival of the Fourth Revolution and an unprecedented economic crisis—where does South Korea truly stand, and where is it headed? Professor Song Ho-geun, a sociologist who has devoted himself to analyzing contemporary society across politics and economics, turns to Hyundai Motor Company to diagnose South Korea's present and future. This is because the growth trajectory of the Hyundai Motor Group is the story of Korea's industrialization, and the strengths and weaknesses of the Hyundai Chaebol have become the very internal structure of the Korean economy. The Road Not Taken, a work by author Professor Song Ho-geun, emphasizes that only by discarding the factors of success can one seek a new path, using the Hyundai Motor Group—which stands at the pinnacle of unprecedented success in the history of the global automotive industry—as an example.

Korean title: 가 보지 않은 길

Korean author: 송호근

Korean publisher: 나남

ISBN-13: 9788930089050