In general, the culture is very hierarchical (respecting elders) thus seniority and age play a big factor in leadership. I would assume that this makes it very easy for mediocre (but good enough to survive) management to stay in positions far too long. Asian culture, but Koreans especially, can be masochistic1 and martyr2 like in their methods. In some ways this creates a tremendous amount of excellence, but it also creates soldiers who may not necessarily be incentivized to innovate, and those who innovate, out of cultural respect will tend to not dare "disrespect" seniority. Being a good soldier makes for career advancements.
Management can also claim the failures of the company as their own personal failures, rather than the gray collective failure of a group(e.g. japanese ceo's claiming company failure as their own), thus employees kind of get absolved of blame.
Work in Korea also tends to be a live at the office kind of affair. It's not uncommon for the white collar folk to go into work at 7a, and stay until 7-9p. Then go drinking with coworkers until midnight, and rinse and repeat. While this makes for very strong bonds amongst coworking peers and better teams, I would imagine that it also takes a toll on the mental capacity of the workforces.
Mainly, I wouldn't be surprised if work in Korea tends to be death marches all the time based on the martyrdome syndrome and masochistic syndrome for career advancement.
1 - http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2010/01/koreans-english-acqui... makes 30k vocab flash cards to learn english 2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-yD4OfY8cM boyfriend gives up both eyes for girlfriend he blinded. Why not keep 1 eye?
