Military-style management and an unquestioning reverence for the founding Lee family have fuelled Samsung’s transition from the world’s most ridiculed phonemaker to its biggest, says the author of a new book.
Today Samsung — by far South Korea’s most powerful conglomerate with more than 50 affiliates from electronics and insurance to hotels and apartments — is a larger smartphone manufacturer than Apple, and at the same time a key supplier to its great rival.
The group’s overall turnover is equivalent to a fifth of the GDP of the world’s 12th-largest economy, where citizens sometimes refer to their country as the “Republic of Samsung”.
It is a remarkable transformation from only a few years ago when Western consumers mocked it as “Sam-suck” for its unreliable products.
At first fascinated by the firm, author Geoffrey Cain said: “As I got deeper, I felt like I was going down the rabbit hole.”
Its rise was tainted with corruption, he writes in “Samsung Rising”, a rare English-language detailing of the highly secretive and opaque empire, published last week in the US.
Cain interviewed around 400 people, including current and former Samsung employees, executives and politicians, he said, but many refused to be named or go on the record.
‘Heaven and Earth’
Founder Lee Byung-chul started Samsung — the name means “Three Stars” — as a vegetable and dried fish shop in 1938 and after the Korean War expanded into sugar, finance, chemicals, electronics and more.
Lee saw Samsung as more than a business, identified with the war-ravaged nation itself, and it played a key part in South Korea’s rise to become Asia’s fourth-biggest economy.
He forged close relations with military dictator Park Chung-hee, and married off his sons to daughters of governors and ministers, sealing enduring connections with political power.
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Cain zeroes in on the firm’s long-running relationship with Apple, which began when a youthful Steve Jobs met Lee Byung-chul in 1983 as he sought parts to build a tablet computer — 27 years before releasing the iPad.
A short-lived alliance was revived in 2005, when Samsung Electronics went to Jobs with its new NAND flash memory chips and became sole memory provider for the iPod.
The South Korean firm has since become a competitor to Apple as well as a supplier, even though its own executives once dismissed their own products, saying the iPhone and Galaxy S were as different as “heaven and earth”.
The change was effected through military-style discipline and long, intense hours, Cain says.
“Untouchable ‘generals’ charged into each new project, and even when things looked iffy, the field troops were expected to praise them to the skies, convincing themselves of their company’s and leaders’ greatness,” he writes.
Despite sometimes “bizarro” working practices — lorryloads of fruit were delivered to a US office to remind staff of their mission “to take a bite out of Apple” — most Samsung employees displayed unquestioning reverence for the founding family, Cain writes.
‘United States of Apple?’
Samsung’s Chaebol Caper: A Tale of Power, Politics, and Prison Bars
Picture the biggest of South Korea’s family-run giants, a conglomerate that’s become the face of the so‑called chaebol. That’s Samsung—a firm that’s woven its way into every side of corporate life, from memory chips to the latest smartphone, and even into the murky corners of politics.
From Founder to Heir: The Succession Shuffle
When Lee Kun‑hee, the founder’s son, decided it was higher time for his own kid, Lee Jae‑yong, to take the reins, he didn’t just hand over the keys. Instead, the boss used slick financial tricks – like convertible bonds, legal loopholes, and straight‑up cash gifts – to smooth the handover. Apparently, “People were lining up to go to jail for the chairman,” the author Cain points out, hinting at how tangled the family’s opportunities were.
Prison Bounces: The Plot Twist
Fast forward and we find the very person who was supposed to lead sidelined, not by a headache, but by a jail cell. Lee Jae‑yong is out on a fine‑print sentence because he allegedly bribed former President Park Geun‑hye—one of the biggest corruption cases South Korea has ever seen.
Since that 2014 heart attack left Lee Kun‑hee in bed, Jae‑yong’s been the unofficial head of Samsung Electronics, juggling the gravity of a corporate titan while the legal team works their magic. He served a full year behind bars, then won a sweeping appeal that tossed most of his charges. Yet, the story’s not over—he’s back in the courtroom for another round.
- Samsung Electronics stayed silent about the book, but its Korean publishers said the company refuses to shut it down.
- South Korea’s chaebols differ markedly from the U.S. model of companies driven by shareholders and entrepreneurs.
- History shows that leaders like Lee Kun‑hee, who faced bribery, embezzlement, and tax evasion charges, often end up receiving presidential pardons— “could you imagine Steve Jobs getting pardoned by two different U.S. presidents?” – Cain quips.
When the Company Doesn’t Lose a Penny
Even while Jae‑yong was in prison, Samsung Electronics didn’t suffer a financial slump. Its profits hit new highs during that period, and shareholders? They’re still waving their hands in approval.
The Empire’s Shareholders: Proud and Confident
At last week’s annual meeting, 68‑year‑old Kim Sang‑woon told AFP he felt “honoured” to own a piece of the empire. He added, “I’m very satisfied and proud of everything.”
So here we have a saga of ambition, legal gymnastics, and a hint of irony—all tied up under the Samsung umbrella where power meets politics, and the family’s fate rides a rollercoaster of both high tech and high court drama.
