This study, which sought to identify the causes of business failure through a questionnaire survey of 104 failed firms and further derive failure prevention measures from respondents' answers, yielded the following conclusions. First, among the causes of business failure in Korean firms, internal factors were found to carry greater weight than external factors. This result is consistent with findings from studies of firms that failed in the 1980s and also aligns with the most recent studies on the causes of failure among firms that went bankrupt after 1997. By domain, the causes of business failure were found to affect firms in the following order: economic conditions and funding factors (20.5%), corporate structure and investment factors (19.6%), financial factors (12.0%), and market factors. Second, compared to firms that failed before the IMF crisis, the major causes of failure for firms that went bankrupt after the IMF crisis, in terms of specific evaluation items, were external factors such as "interest rate increases due to exchange rate hikes," "additional interest burdens," "management losses due to foreign exchange losses," "chain bankruptcies following the failure of affiliated firms," and "rising prices of imported raw materials," followed by "failure to borrow from financial institutions in emergencies" and "lack of capital-raising ability." Third, regarding the causal chain of corporate failure, the most fundamental causes—the primary and secondary causes—were "economic conditions and funding factors" and "corporate structure and investment factors." Subsequently, financial factors, sales factors, market factors, and other factors emerged as tertiary causes resulting from the primary and secondary causes, and these tertiary factors led failed firms to exhibit symptoms such as excessive financial cost burdens, inventory accumulation, and the failure of affiliated companies immediately before bankruptcy. Fourth, as prevention measures to overcome corporate distress and failure, the remedies most frequently cited by respondents can be found in corporate structure factors, followed by investment factors, financial factors, and government policy, in that order.