Ducatibrien: When you're googling Whacheon, try also Hwacheon (that's the spelling used by the US importer)
The Swedish oil-country lathe-maker I was trying to think of was 'Storebro'. I checked, and they no longer make manual lathes. Shame.
Modern (Canada) and WMW (Eastern Europe) are worth checking. Try an "advanced search" on the
Welcome to MachineTools.com: The Leading Worldwide Metalworking Industry Marketplace
site - they also list Poreba, TOS Trencin (including a couple of 28" swing in North America: one in Ontario, Canada and one in Puebla, Mexico), and some of the Taiwanese brands mentioned in this thread, also Acra (which some say is comparable with Sharp).
Also, interestingly, Boehringer
I did a quick search and this came up among others
WILLIS SE2880 Lathes, Engine New - MachineTools.com
Willis is a US company in Ohio. The lathe LOOKS Chinese, but they sell Solberga drills (which are high quality Swedish) so it might be worth checking
There's also a suitable sized machine from another Ohio company called "Cincinatti Machines". It too looks Chinese, from the tiny thumbnail image I saw... if so, Yikes !!!!!!!!!
I might have to go and hug my Cincy Toolmaster for mutual reassurance (admittedly it was built in France, but it's a credit to the marque)
WMW are a generic Eastern European brand from the Soviet era, but unlike Stankoimport, I thing the name is still in use, so that's another worth looking out for.
The Soviets pretty much took heavy to the logical extreme, but they didn't stop there. I found out a few years back (on this forum, methinks) a plausible explanation which went something like this: The production quotas for machine tools in the Soviet era were set in tonnes, not value or numbers produced or some other sensible measure, and the quotas were on a constant growth model, so every year you had to make 10% (or whatever) more than last year.
By far the easiest way to comply - possibly the only way - was just to keep adding bog to the coreboxes, effectively increasing the wall thickness of all the castings by 10% per year. Mission accomplished!
I'm not sure if they ever out-tonned, say, American Pacemaker, size for size, but they certainly gave it a fright!