There are five major groups in South Korea, namely Samsung, Hyundai, LG, SK and Rakuten. They dominate consumer electronics, automotive, real estate, machinery, retail and other fields, covering almost all of South Koreans' food, clothing, and housing. The CJ Group to be introduced today, although it is not as good as the five major groups, but its strength cannot be underestimated, and it has an inextricable relationship with Samsung.
According to the data, South Korea's Xijie Group (CJ) has been established for 69 years and has four core business groups, including food and catering services, biotechnology, logistics and new circulation, entertainment and media. In the Fortune Global 500 list, it ranked 450th with US$27.1247 billion (about 173 billion yuan), making it on the list for four consecutive years.
The history of Xijie Group dates back to the early 1950s, when Lee Byung-cheol, the founder of South Korea's Samsung, founded First Sugar Co., Ltd. (the predecessor of Xijie Group), which was the first sugar company in Korea. At that time, Lee Byung-cheol broke the unwritten tradition of "passing on the long and not passing on the wife" in the Korean business community and chose the third elder of the family, Lee Ken Hee, as the successor of the Samsung Group. As compensation, the eldest son, Li Mengxi, inherited the first sugar company. However, this distribution laid the groundwork for future family infighting.
The eldest brother Lee Meng-hee's enterprise, the sugar business gradually expanded the scale of production, in Gimpo, Incheon and other places to build new factories. The business has also expanded from sugar production to feed, edible oil, frozen food and other fields, and established a special food research institute, becoming the largest food company in Korea. During this period, he also set up companies in Southeast Asia and other places and began to operate across borders. After the death of his father, the contradiction between Li Mengxi and Li Jianxi became more and more acute, and finally even turned against each other. In the 1990s, the first sugar industry was officially separated from the Samsung Group and operated independently, with Lee Jae-hyun, Son Jae-hyun, son of Lee Meng-hee, and Sun Kyung-sik, the brother of his wife Sun Funan, as co-chairmen, and Xijie Group began to diversify its operations, focusing on the development of catering, logistics, life chemistry and other businesses.
Lee Jae-hyun's sister Lee Mi-kyung founded CJ Entertainment Media. As the largest entertainment company in Korea, it is the producer of the Oscar-winning film Parasite, which covers a wide range of industries such as radio and television, film, music, and games, as well as film production, distribution, and cinema business. CJ Entertainment Media is a large-scale music investment, planning and distribution company in South Korea, with music events such as "Mnet Asia Large-scale Music Awards Ceremony", "KCON" and Hallyu Cultural Festival. In October 2021, it plans to acquire SM Entertainment, a large K-POP entertainment company, to expand its music creation business. In recent years, CJ Group's entertainment business has done a good job, and Li Meijing has also been called "the godmother of Asian entertainment" by the media.
Although Samsung is not famous in China, Xijie Group has been in the Greater China market for 28 years. It has invested more than 20 billion yuan in China, and has 23 factories and about 20,000 employees in more than 80 cities (excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan). While continuously increasing the variety of food, the business scope will be expanded to the field of feed, and in Liaocheng, Shandong and Shenyang, Liaoning Province, the establishment and operation of feed and food additives, amino acid production plants. What you may not know is that CJ's products have long since entered our daily lives. For example, the condiment brand "Daxida" on the supermarket shelves, the fast food brand "Bi Pin Ge", the fast food rice brand "Hi Mix", the soy product brand "Bai Yu", the traditional pickled side dish and sauce food brand "Ji Xiang Ju", etc., are also owned by the group.
As for OLIVE YOUNG, I believe that many friends who pay attention to fashion and beauty will not feel strange. In the entertainment field, its CGV cinema is one of the first international and cinemas to be allowed to enter the Chinese market, and the first cinema was opened in Shanghai in 2006. Up to now, 148 have been opened, covering more than 60 cities, and it is one of the top film investment companies in China.
Large family business groups like Samsung are not alone, but several large family businesses such as Hyundai, LG, and SK have a similar situation, and several family-run projects cover almost the entire industry and commerce in South Korea. These extended families grew up rapidly, and they firmly controlled the local market through the marriage of their children.