Russia's economy is roughly the size of South Korea's, and barely a 20th the size of America's.

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Although none was jailed, the government said the amnesty was necessary because the businessmen needed to be cleared of their criminal records in order to help South Korea recover from a slowing of its economy.

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The building blocks of a modern economy--bridges, roads, power lines--are at about the level of South Korea a quarter century ago, according to the Construction and Economic Research Institute of South Korea.

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At one point its economy grew faster than that of any other big country bar Japan and South Korea.

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But tourism was one of the rare bright spots for South Korea's economy last year, when exports fell 1.3%, their first decline since 2009.

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It isn't rare in South Korea, where family-owned chaebol dominate its economy, to see company owners convicted of white collar crimes being granted presidential pardons.

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But such forward thinking has transformed South Korea from one of the poorest countries in Asia to an advanced high-tech economy that's home to major tech firms like Samsung and LG, as well as the most wired population on the planet.

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South Korea, the world's tenth-largest economy, was effectively bankrupted by the withdrawal of Japanese money, he says.

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