Samsung and the Lee Family: From Dried Fish in Daegu to AI Memory Chips

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In 1938, under Japanese rule, Lee Byung-chul opened Samsung Sanghoe in Daegu with 40 employees, trading dried fish and noodles. The name means three stars, chosen to signal something big and eternal. The Korean War wiped out his Seoul business, and he rebuilt with a sugar refinery in Busan and, by 1954, the country's largest woolen mill, helped by state-backed loans to favored industrialists. In 1972 the first Samsung-branded black and white TV came off the line in Suwon while Lee also owned the Tongyang Broadcasting Company, until the government forced the network shut in 1980. The family ran the group through circular cross-shareholdings that gave it control with a small personal stake.

After Lee died in 1987 the group split into five, and the core went to his third son, Lee Kun-hee. At a 1993 meeting in Frankfurt he told executives to change everything except their wives and kids, shifting Samsung from cheap volume to quality. It became the top memory chip maker, built towers including Taipei 101 and the Burj Khalifa, shed its car unit to Renault in the 1997 crisis and passed Nokia in phones by 2012. In 2007 former Samsung lawyer Kim Yong-chul alleged thousands of secret accounts and a slush fund stored in art. Lee Kun-hee was convicted and then pardoned in 2009, and his son Lee Jae-yong was imprisoned for bribery and embezzlement and later pardoned. In May 2026 Samsung reached a $1 trillion valuation.

• A 1947 joint venture with Cho Hong-jai dissolved within a few years over equity and management disputes.
• Samsung's textile arm invested in the hip-hop brand FUBU in 1995 after its founder placed a newspaper ad seeking funding.
• The government justified Lee Kun-hee's pardon by his International Olympic Committee role in the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics bid.
• In 2022 Samsung's revenue equaled 22.4 percent of South Korea's GDP, fueling the phrase Republic of Samsung.
• Samsung lost a $1.05 billion patent case to Apple in 2012 and canceled the fire-prone Galaxy Note 7 in 2016.