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Samsung Group staged a real-life version of the successor battle, the eldest and second were out, and Lee Kun-hee became the final winner.
When it comes to the smartphone business in today's world, South Korea's Samsung phones have a place.
But in addition to electronics and technology, South Korea's Samsung Group is also focused on finance, engineering, education, entertainment and even sports. And such a huge enterprise is led by the Samsung family.
So, what are the highlights of the competition for the Samsung family?
The founder of Samsung Group is Li Bingzhe, that is, the first generation of Samsung's wealthy family. It's just that when he founded Samsung, he couldn't be called a wealthy family.
On March 1, 1938, Lee Byung-chul established a trucking company in Busan and named it Samsung Trading Company, which was the predecessor of Samsung.
In 1945, during World War II, Samsung began to expand its cargo transportation business to the whole of Korea and other countries. Samsung also established its headquarters in Seoul in 1947.
When the Korean War broke out in 1950, it was already one of the top 10 trading companies in South Korea.
After the North Korean army occupied Seoul at the time, Lee Byung-chul was forced to relocate his business to Busan. However, in the next year and a half of the war, a large number of American troops and equipment poured into Busan, which played a pivotal role in the development of Samsung Trading Company.
There is also a view that the Li family's Samsung is a company that made the money of the war and is also an enterprise that started from the war.
If it is just to make war money, then for Samsung after the war, the end of the war may mean the end of Samsung's enterprise.
Because there was no war to fight, it meant the end of business and the closure of wealth, but Samsung Group played a greater role in South Korea after the war.
After World War II, although the wars on a large scale of the world have ended, some conflicts on a small scale still exist.
The war has destroyed the economies of most countries and regions in the world, except for the United States.
In 1953, both North and South Korea were torn apart by a devastating three-year war that killed more than 2 million people, destroyed cities and towns, and plunged their economies.
Before the war, the economies of these two countries were not optimistic, and post-war reconstruction was imminent.
But in the eight years since the end of the conflict, North Korea has achieved an impressive recovery under a well-organized and purposeful government that appears to have laid the foundations for a modern industrial society.
South Korea, by contrast, was marked by political corruption and unrest, sluggish economic growth, and dependence on large amounts of U.S. aid.
At least on the surface, South Korea's future has a long way to go.
In the eight years following the Korean War, South Korea's economic development was hampered by political turmoil and widespread corruption.
Syngman Rhee, who has been president since 1948, has ruled authoritarianly but has been unable to provide effective leadership to help South Korea build a stable political system and lift itself out of poverty.
Syngman Rhee's Liberal Party has done little to bring about any real change in South Korea other than to continue his rule and use its government to pursue the political and economic interests of its members.
In South Korea at the time, Rhee's grip on power was in jeopardy with a rapidly growing urban population dissatisfied with the regime, a public dislike of government corruption, and frustration with the slow pace of economic recovery and growth.
Finally, a revolution broke out in Korea. This also made the United States see that South Korea's economic growth rate at that time was extremely slow, and most of this growth came from American aid.
The U.S. has funded much of South Korea's national operating budget, including helping it pay for all of its sprawling military.
At that time, South Korea's economy was growing at an average annual rate of about 4 percent, and if you take into account the high birth rate, the per capita growth rate was less than 2 percent. From its lowest point at the end of the Korean War, these growth rates meant that South Korea in 1961 was still extremely poor.
The outbreak of the Korean Revolution exposed the most fragile problems of Korean society that must be addressed. The South Korean government, including the United States, is aware that economic transformation is necessary and that only economic transformation can bring political stability.
At that time, there were already many family businesses in South Korea, called chaebol groups. The South Korean government was interested in allowing these chaebols to help transform the country's economy.
So, what role does Samsung Group play in this?
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Samsung staged a real-life version of the successor battle, the eldest and second boss were out, and Lee Kun-hee reaped the benefits.
Chaebols are a large, mostly family-run conglomerate that dominates South Korea's economy and exerts extraordinary influence on South Korean politics.
These powerful entities have transformed South Korea, once an inconspicuous agricultural market, into one of the world's largest economies, and it can be said that the chaebols have played a central role.
And Samsung is one of the companies that gave a major boost to South Korea from the 60s to the 90s of the 20th century.
So, how did Samsung help South Korea reshape its post-war economy and usher in the transformation of the country's entire era?
Many of South Korea's chaebols date back to the Japanese occupation before the end of World War II, and they themselves emulated Japan's powerful industrial and financial conglomerates.
After the Korean War, as U.S. and international aid flowed into Seoul, the South Korean government began providing hundreds of millions of dollars in special loans and other financial support to the chaebols, especially in key industries such as construction, chemicals, petroleum, and steel.
Because the Samsung Group was already a relatively successful trading company during the war and had established ties with the U.S. military, the South Korean government also favored Samsung in the post-war recovery.
In the 50s of the 20th century, U.S. aid once accounted for nearly 80 percent of the total revenue of the South Korean government and a large part of the country's entire gross national product.
The government used this assistance to accumulate large quantities of dollars, which were then issued to merchants with import licences, enabling them to purchase those dollars at the official exchange rate.
Since the won didn't really reflect any market realities at the time, this meant that they could buy imported goods cheaply and sell them locally for a good profit. Part of the profits will go to Rhee's Liberal Party.
Samsung's Lee Byung-chul is one of the most favored capitalists, and by buying the dollars accumulated by the government, Samsung provides the Liberal Party with a large amount of disposable fiscal revenue.
First, he bought imported sugar at low prices for his first sugar mill, using the government's foreign exchange license to become the country's largest oil refinery, while also becoming an important financial contributor to the pro-government Liberal Party.
In this way, a small group of wealthy chaebol businessmen who relied on the cooperation of the regime flourished.
But at the same time, South Korea's exports are very few, very little, almost none. Data show that in 1956, exports were $25 million and imports were $389 million, and the injection of American aid funds undoubtedly made up for the huge deficit.
Thanks to the accumulation of dollars at this time, it laid the foundation for the later development of Samsung Group.
In 1961, a military coup took place in South Korea, and Park Chung-hee became president. Since then, Li Bingzhe has stayed in Japan for a long time. After all, a chaebol with deep ties to the previous government is a threat to the new government.
However, due to some economic problems in South Korea, the Park Chung-hee government reached an agreement with Lee Byung-chul, who then returned to South Korea.
It is not difficult to see from this that the South Korean government has always been full of ties with the chaebols, and the chaebols influence the South Korean government.
The chaebol's success also relies on close cooperation with the South Korean government, which has provided support in the form of subsidies, loans, and tax incentives for decades since the 50s, making the chaebol the backbone of the Korean economy.
These businesses flourished under Park Chung-hee's leadership. As part of Park's export-oriented development strategy, his government has prioritized preferential loans to exporters and is insulating domestic industries from external competition.
This practice is similar to that of the other Asian tigers. Park Chung-hee sought to build a self-reliant, non-dependent South Korea that could be self-reliant and capable of self-protection.
At the same time, this kind of help has also enabled South Korea's economy to take off rapidly, thanks to the rise of these chaebol enterprises, South Korea has solved the employment problem of a large number of people, and at the same time, South Korea has been able to have excess tax revenue to develop education and improve the quality of the whole people.
Over time, the chaebol expanded into new industrial areas and ventured into lucrative foreign markets, which provided more fuel for South Korea's growth engine.
Exports have grown from just 4% of GDP in 1961 to more than 40% in 2016, one of the highest rates in the world.
Around the same time, the average income of Koreans increased from $120 per year to more than $27,000 today.
As millions of people in South Korea were lifted out of poverty, the simultaneous rise of the chaebols also integrated these conglomerates into the narrative of South Korea's postwar revival.
Although there are more than forty conglomerates that fit the definition of a chaebol, only a few have enormous economic power. Together, the top five account for about half of the value of South Korea's stock market.
And the South Korean chaebol has promoted most of the country's investment in technology research and development, opened factories around the world, and employed a large number of employees.
Samsung Electronics is the largest subsidiary of Samsung Chaebol Group, with more than 300,000 employees worldwide, a figure that exceeds Apple's 123,000 employees and Google's 88,000 employees combined.
The external development of the Samsung Group is so smooth, and the internal struggle of the family business is also closely related to this.
So, after the first generation of Lee Byung-chul, who are the second-generation candidates of the Samsung family, and who will take over the leadership of the consortium in the end?
3
Samsung Group staged a real-life version of the successor battle, the eldest and second were out, and Lee Kun-hee became the biggest winner.
Li Bingzhe has three sons, all of whom are being cultivated as the key objects of the family's succession. However, the eldest son and the second son were short-sighted and actually sued their own father in an attempt to gain control of the family.
In the end, the third son, Lee Kun-hee, became the actual controller of the second generation of Samsung chaebol.
The family has a grudge against a wealthy family, and it stands to reason that the father and son are soldiers, but the Samsung family is cold, and the father and son can also become enemies.
So, what happened during Lee Kun-hee's rise to power?
The Samsung family has often been reported in major media because of its involvement in lawsuits, and last year, Lee Jae-yong, the third generation of the Samsung family, was released from prison after serving more than two years in prison.
Because of the relationship between the chaebol and the government, the government is uncertain, often due to economic or performance problems, which leads to instability, and South Korea is a country with an electoral system, and a government can only be elected through elections.
The South Korean government has changed up and down very frequently, and the South Korean government seems to have an iron law that people who have been president of South Korea are either imprisoned or killed.
South Korea's president is such a high-risk industry, not to mention the chaebol families with close ties to the South Korean government.
And within the chaebol family, because of various power struggles, they will shake out the scandals within their own families, especially the secrets between them and the government. This kind of thing often happens in the Li family.
In 1966, Lee Chang-hee, the second son of Samsung's founder, Lee Byung-chul, was arrested for smuggling 50 tons of saccharin into South Korea. Under pressure, Li Bingzhe had no choice but to resign.
Then, according to Korean tradition, Lee Byung-chul's eldest son, Lee Meng-hee, took over in 1967 and became the new head of Samsung Group.
But Mr. Lee was a mediocre man who led the Samsung group into chaos within six months.
After that, the second son, Lee Chang-hee, actually reported to the South Korean government that his father had an improper transaction with the government, that is, bribery. The second son's purpose in doing this is to compete for the position of head of Samsung.
The first person in the Li family to go out was the second son Li Changxi. It is clear that no matter how strong a person's desire to succeed is, he cannot break the foundation on which he or she depends.
In addition, some of the secrets between the chaebol and the government, such as bribery, are aimed at keeping the company alive, or seeking greater development prospects.
From these aspects, these things within the family, as long as they are family members, should try to keep these scandals as much as possible, for others it is a scandal, and for the family, it may be a matter of life and death.
Besides, the eldest son Li Mengxi may be the eldest son of the family, he is not learned and unskilled, and he is used to being high, he may be more suitable to be a gentleman, and he is not suitable to be a patriarch who leads the big family to move forward.
In 1987, Lee Chang-hee died at the age of 46. Since then, the unknown third son, Lee Kun-hee, has since become the second-generation main leader of Samsung Group.
Samsung, under Lee Kun-hee, has left a lasting mark on South Korea's economy, and it was he who drove South Korea's rise as a major technology exporter.
Samsung's biggest source of growth is semiconductors. In the '70s, Lee Kun-hee led the acquisition of a chip company founded by a former Motorola engineer, and then he pushed for massive investments to reduce production costs and crowd out competitors.
That bet paid off, and Samsung became the world's largest manufacturer of memory chips. Chips now account for the largest portion of South Korea's exports and have protected the South Korean economy during the coronavirus pandemic.
Lee Kun-hee passed away in 2020, and Samsung's third-generation children and grandchildren are still vying for control of the family just like their fathers.
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