The Zombie Pattern: Why the Count Always Arrives Late — and Short
On August 9, Korea's Construction & Economy Research Institute (CERIK) published its structural review of externally audited construction companies. Every headline that followed carried the same number: marginal firms had roughly tripled in five years, from 62 in 2021 to 173 in 2025 — from 4.5% of the sector to 11.3%. The number is real. What is worth pausing on is how the sample was built. CERIK started with 2,337 construction firms for which five years of financial statements were available. It then excluded 333 companies that entered capital impairment during the period, and analysed the remaining 2,004 — 1,099 general contractors and 905 specialty contractors. This is a defensible methodological choice: ratio analysis breaks down when equity goes negative, and leaving those firms in would distort every average in the study. But it has a consequence that does not survive the trip into a headline. The group that deteriorated most severely left the frame before the counting...