The Min clan from Yŏhŭg near Yŏju in Kyŏnggi Province gained prominence at the end of the Chosŏn Dynasty with the decline of the Andong Kim clan. Viscount Min Yŏng-hwi (1852–1935; pen name, Hajŏng) and his sons, Taesik and Kyu-sik, turned their energies mainly to finance, with interests in agriculture and industry as well. The father had been appointed to the board of the Hanil Bank in August of 1912. Within three years Min Yŏng-hwi won executive control, relinquishing the presidency to his son Tae-sik only in 1920. The family retained executive responsibilities and the major block of shares in the Hanil and its successor from 1931, the Tongil Bank. Aristocratic status and long experience of high political office served the family well in relations with the state and other Korean investors during the colonial years. Education abroad was a further advantage for the younger of the sons, Kyu-sik, a graduate of Cambridge University. Min Tae-sik's son, Pyŏng-do graduated from Keio University before returning to Korea for a career in the Bank of Chōsen and the Tongil.

A study of Min family enterprise opens up the world of banking in the turbulent years of colonial rule. One can feel the competition by looking to Min family efforts to take over the Hanil Bank, then other smaller Korean banks, and finally to sustain ownership if not control of the Hanil's successor, the Tongil Bank.

Japanese authorities gave wide publicity to the economic and social benefits of colonial rule in their Annual Report on Reforms and Progress in Chōsen. They too promoted an image of benign capitalism, but without nationalist concerns for indigenous ownership or an autonomous national economy. Yet even the Korean businessmen who might profit from such growth found themselves scrambling to survive and succeed in a closely supervised environment dominated by Japanese investment. The prominence of military leaders selected to direct the colony and the stringency of their control were evidence of the strategic importance of the Korean peninsula: a buffer against continental aggression and a base for expansion into Manchuria and China. The state never wavered in its commitment to security and control, to economic development of the peninsula as a self-sufficient colony within the empire, and later to establish Korea as a forward base for expansion into the Japanese-controlled territory of Manchukuo. The government-general kept a tight rein on an often hostile Korean populace fiercely proud of their own cultural traditions and long accustomed to domestic self-rule as an independent nation within the Chinese orbit. They denied Koreans political participation while encouraging a closely supervised role in the economy.

The colonial state has been aptly characterized as growth-oriented and interventionist in economic affairs, promoting the peninsula as a base for mineral, agricultural, and eventually manufactured exports.

Pak Hŭng-sik pleaded ignorance when accused of cooperation with the Japanese colonial rulers: “I was a businessman unversed in politics.” Unversed perhaps in nationalist politics, Pak was certainly adept in persuading the government of his credibility and hardly shy about his contribution to the growth of commerce on the peninsula. The Min brothers, Kim Yŏn-su, and Pak proved themselves masters at the practical business ideology necessary to gain government support and a share in the domestic marketplace. They faced a challenge in the colony not only of nationalist identity under alien rule, but also of capitalist enterprise in a feudal society. Byron Marshall wrote of “business ideologies” as “ideas expressed by or on behalf of the business class with the manifest intent of creating attitudes favorable to private capitalism.” Cogent ideologies are necessary to support largescale ventures, particularly in the early stages of capitalist development. Local capitalists could find no moral justification for the pursuit of private profit in their own Korean Confucian tradition. The absence of earlier ideologies complicated immediate tasks such as persuading landowners of transfer capital from agriculture to commercial and industrial investments. Add to this the fact that ideologies carried the further burden of somehow legitimating indigenous enterprise under the political rule and economic domination of Japan, and you can sense the complexity of their task.