The origins of this project go back to a grant that Lawrence Krause submitted to the Korea Foundation just as the economic crisis in East Asia was unfolding. At the time, Krause was the Director (and founder) of the Korea Pacific Program (KPP) at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) at the University of California, San Diego. With this generous grant in hand, Krause and Stephan Haggard, also at IR/PS, approached the Korea Development Institute (KDI) about the prospect of collaborating on a project on the crisis and its aftermath.

On coming to office, Kim Dae-jung had outlined an ambitious reform program in four areas: corporate restructuring; the financial sector; labor markets and social policy; and government institutions. All posed challenging inter-disciplinary issues, but after consultation with colleagues at KDI and the KDI School, including Hong-Tack Chun, Seong Min Yoo and Sang-woo Nam, Haggard and Krause narrowed their focus to the area of corporate restructuring. Reform of the chaebol has long been a privileged issue in Korea, and the economic crisis added a new sense of urgency to it. They presented their ideas to KDI president Jin-soon Lee and got a supportive response.

The Asian financial crisis and the issue of corporate restructuring had already captured the attention of both institutions. At IR/PS, Haggard and Krause had convened a faculty seminar on the crisis that included among others Peter Gourevitch, Takeo Hoshi, Miles Kahler, Euysung Kim, Andrew MacIntyre, John McMillan, Peter Timmer, and Christopher Woodruff.