Who are Lee Byung-chul and Lee Kun-hee, the founders of the nation's top company Samsung?
Lee Byung-chul, the first head of Samsung
a South Korean businessman He is the founder and first chairman of Samsung. Korea's semiconductor industry, which was a barren land for the electronics industry, is one of the two leading players in the industry. The other was his son, Chairman Lee Kun-hee, who later revived the semiconductor industry started by Lee Byung-chul's son Lee Kun-hee and built today's Samsung.
The current Samsung Group, CJ Group, and Shinsegae Group all originate from Lee Byung-chul and are so-called "Pan-Samsung Street," and are still having a huge influence in the Korean business community. The population of Korea is 51,638,809, and the number of employees of the Pan-Samsung family is about 15.18 million, including non-regular workers. Among them, Samsung Electronics alone has 113,965 employees at its headquarters and 470,000 indirect employees including dispatched workers, partners and subsidiaries included in other corporations. The number of full-time employees alone reaches 300,000.
This is more than double the 140,000 full-time employees of Apple, the No. 1 market capitalization. (If you've heard someone's name somewhere, you can't reach the pan-Samsung family.) Considering that the total number of self-employed people nationwide is 6.57 million, it is actually huge.
Although the size of the company is now smaller, Hansol Group, the largest company in the paper industry, is included. In addition, Radix Globes (Amigo, famous for nachos and cheese sauce), led by Lee Hye-jin, the second son of Lee Chang-hee, and DM Pure Tech, led by her husband Cho Myoung-hee, and Almouth (formerly Youngbo Engineering), led by Kim Sang-yong, son of Lee Soon-hee, are among the Samsung family.
Lee Kun-hee, Samsung's 2nd Chief Executive
The third son of Samsung Group founder Lee Byung-chul, he overtook CJ Group's first brother Lee Maeng-hee and Saehan Group's second brother Lee Chang-hee as Samsung Group's successor and became the group's chairman in 1987, when his father Lee Byung-chul died. In June 1993, he advocated "new management" and has since used it as his motto, and at this time when he led Samsung, Samsung Electronics overtook the leading companies in Gumi and Japan to become the world's first-class company. He is one of the two leading players in Korea's semiconductor industry along with his father, Chairman Lee Byung-chul, and can be called the second founder of Samsung Group.
Samsung Group's annual sales were less than 10 trillion won when he took office in 1987, but Samsung Group's annual sales nearly tripled to 400 trillion won after he took office and managed it for 30 years. In particular, the semiconductor industry is a business sector that is so uncertain that it is called a "crazy industry." In this field, Samsung, which was treated as a small and medium-sized manufacturer in the U.S. and Japan, has been raised to the highest level in the world, so it is worth considering its management performance as an ideal example of centralized owner management. Recently, as LG withdrew from the smartphone business, it is unintentionally receiving more spotlight.
He briefly stepped down as chairman in 2008 due to a slush fund and tax evasion scandal revealed by former Samsung's legal team leader Kim Yong-chul's confession of conscience, but returned to Samsung Electronics in 2010. In May 2014, he suffered an acute myocardial infarction, and since then, he has been virtually unable to engage in normal activities in a coma, so he has only resigned from management, and his eldest son, Lee Jae-yong, has virtually fulfilled the role of Samsung CEO on behalf of Lee Kun-hee. He died on October 25, 2020 after a six-year, five-month struggle.