Posco's first-ever loss came with 35 scrapped units — the bill for steel built at the top

In January 2016 Posco, South Korea's largest steelmaker, reported its first-ever net loss: 96 billion won ($79.4 million) for 2015. Operating profit fell 25 percent to 2.41 trillion won, and sales fell 10.6 percent to 58.19 trillion won. For a company that had been a symbol of Korea's industrial rise, the red ink was a first.

Posco blamed weak global demand for steel and adverse currency movements — a prolonged slump in its core steel business, driven in large part by Chinese overcapacity flooding the world market. The loss was modest for a group of Posco's size; the signal was the direction.

Under chairman Kwon Oh-joon, the company had already been retreating from the expansion of the boom years. It scrapped about 35 businesses and offices at home and abroad, including its Odisha steel-mill project in India, and said it would restructure a further 35 by the end of the year to refocus on its core.

The overseas mills and resource projects committed when steel was booming were precisely the ones being unwound. A first-ever loss is less about the size of the number than the admission behind it: the growth strategy had run out of market, and the capacity built at the top of the cycle was now being written off.