South Korea’s richest and strongest industrialist, Lee Kun-hee, turned Samsung Electronics into one of many world’s largest tech firms however lived a reclusive existence.

Nonetheless, occasional pronouncements on enterprise by the tycoon, who died at 78 on Sunday, reverberated by the nation.

When he inherited the chairmanship of the Samsung group in 1987 — based by his father as a fish and fruit exporter — it was already the nation’s largest conglomerate, with operations starting from client electronics to building.

However Lee reworked it into a worldwide energy — by the point he was left bedridden by a coronary heart assault in 2014, it was the world’s largest maker of smartphones and reminiscence chips.

He seldom ventured out from the excessive partitions of his personal compound in central Seoul to go to the corporate headquarters, incomes him the nickname “hermit king”.

Samsung is by far the largest of the chaebols, the family-controlled conglomerates that dominate South Korea’s economic system.

They drove the nation’s transformation from a war-ravaged smash to the world’s 12th-largest economic system, however these days are accused of murky political ties and stifling competitors — with Lee himself twice convicted of legal offences, in a single case bribing a president.

Lee’s far-sighted management model was broadly credited with turning Samsung Electronics, now the group’s flagship subsidiary, into one of many world’s main builders and producers of semiconductors, cellphones and LCDs.

“Chairman Lee was a real visionary who reworked Samsung into the world-leading innovator and industrial powerhouse,” Samsung stated in a press release saying his dying.

“His legacy can be eternal.”

– ‘Let’s change every thing’ –

Early in Lee’s chairmanship, Samsung was seen as a shoddy producer of low-cost, low-quality merchandise.

“Let’s change every thing besides our wives and children,” he stated in 1993.

The corporate gathered up and burnt all 150,000 cellphones it had in inventory, paving the best way for the rebirth of the extremely profitable “Anycall” handset.

Quickly afterwards, he ordered Chinese language-made merchandise to be displayed at Samsung headquarters, saying it was essential to indicate how China was rapidly catching up.

Lee hardly ever spoke to the media, however was carefully watched every time he broke his lengthy silences, usually with doom-laden New 12 months company addresses.

In conferences with subordinates and occasional interviews, Lee all the time burdened the significance of vivid minds in enterprise.

“It doesn’t matter what occurs, there can be nothing to be afraid of if now we have the most effective expertise,” he as soon as stated.

“Within the period of limitless competitors, successful or dropping will rely upon a small variety of geniuses… One genius will feed 100,000 folks.”

– Pekingese love –

Lee, the third son of Samsung group founder Lee Byung-chull, had a smooth spot for canines — developed as a toddler in Japan the place he went to high school from age 11.

“My past love was my Pekingese,” Lee wrote in a group of essays revealed in 1997. “I discovered then that an emotional dialogue between a person and a canine was potential.”

He was additionally recognized for his love of films, horseriding and unique supercars.

Lee studied at Japan’s prestigious Waseda College and earned an MBA at George Washington College in the USA.

On the age of 36, he grew to become vice chairman of the group’s building and buying and selling arm, and have become group chairman 9 years later, shortly after his father’s dying.

Lee was recognized for taking months-long journeys to Hawaii and Japan earlier than key enterprise choices, together with the promotion of his personal son Lee Jae-yong to vice chairman of Samsung Electronics in 2013.

– Shrouded in thriller –

Large enterprise and political energy have usually been carefully linked in South Korea, and in 1996, Lee Kun-hee was convicted of bribing former president Roh Tae-woo.

Whereas Roh was in workplace, Lee paid him “a big sum of cash in bribes over an extended interval”, the courtroom dominated, in search of favours for Samsung within the president’s enterprise coverage choices.

Lee was additionally discovered responsible of embezzlement and tax evasion in a slush fund scandal in 2008, which noticed him briefly step down from the corporate management.

However suspended sentences meant he by no means served time in jail and he acquired two presidential pardons, occurring to spearhead his nation’s profitable efforts to safe the 2018 Winter Olympics.

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Just a few years later, he fought off a lawsuit from his older brother and sister claiming they have been entitled to Samsung shares price billions of {dollars}.

Lee married Hong Ra-hee — whose father was a justice minister — with whom he had a son and three daughters.

After his coronary heart assault, Lee spent his final years in medical care.

Secretly filmed footage broadcast in 2017 confirmed him seated in a wheelchair, whereas different reviews stated he was in a coma however didn’t want a ventilator.

Little was ever revealed about his situation, leaving him shrouded in thriller even in his remaining days.

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