Samsung Group

The Samsung Group is South Korea's largest conglomerate (chaebol), composed of numerous businesses, including Samsung Electronics, the world's largest electronics company[1], Samsung Heavy Industries, one of the world's biggest shipbuilders and Samsung Engineering & Construction, one of the major construction contractors worldwide. These three businesses form the core of Samsung Group and are the reason for the name; the meaning of the Korean word 'Samsung' is "tristar" or "three stars." Samsung Group is South Korea's largest company & exporter, the 5th largest company in the world and is helmed by chairman Lee Kun-Hee, the third son of the founder Lee Byung-chul.
1950s - 1980s

* 1950: Byung-Chul Lee founded Samsung trading company in Seoul ([YPM])
* 1953: Samsung starts sugar production, which has since been spun off into the CJ Corporation.
* 1958: Samsung starts insurance business.
* 1963: The first Shinsegae department store opens in Seoul.
* 1964: Samsung starts Tongyang Broadcasting Company(TBC), which later merged with KBS.
* 1965: Samsung starts the Joong-Ang Ilbo daily newspaper, which is no longer affiliated with the company.
* 1969: Samsung Electronics was founded.
* 1974: Samsung Petrochemical and Heavy Industries were founded.
* 1976: The company was awarded an export prize by the government as a part of the country's development program.
* 1977: As a result of this export prize, Samsung Construction emerged. In addition, Samsung Shipbuilding is formed.
* 1982: Samsung establishes a professional baseball team.
* 1983: Samsung produces its first computer chip: a 64k DRAM chip.
* Towards the end of the 1980s, Samsung pushed its efforts in petrochemicals and electronics.

Samsung means “three stars” in Korean. Lee Byung-Chull founded Samsung in 1938. It started as a small trading company with forty employees, located in Seoul. The company did fairly well until the Communist invasion in 1950 which caused great damage to his inventories. He was force to leave and start over in Suwon in 1951. In just a year, the company’s assets had grown twenty-fold. In 1953, Lee created a sugar refinery—the South Korea’s first manufacturing facility after the Korean War. “The company prospered under Lee’s philosophy of making Samsung the leader in each industry he entered” (Samsung Electronics). The company started moving into service businesses such as insurance, securities, and department store. In the early 1970s, Lee borrowed money from foreign companies to begin the mass communication industry by launching a radio and television station (Samsung Electronics).

South Korean President, Park Chung-Hee’s regime during the 1960s and 1970s helped Samsung Electronics and many other Korean firms. Park put great importance in increasing economic growth and development, and assisted large, profitable companies, protecting them from competition and aiding financially as well. His government banned several exterior companies selling consumer electronics in South Korea. “To make up for a lack of technological expertise in South Korea, the South Korean government effectively required foreign telecommunications equipment manufacturers to hand over advanced semiconductor technology in return for access to the Korean market” (Samsung Electronics). This enormously helped Samsung to manufacture the first Korean dynamic random access memory chips. “Furthermore, although Samsung Electronics was free to invest in overseas companies, foreign investors were forbidden to buy into Samsung” (Samsung Electronics). Samsung quickly thrived in the domestic market.

Samsung Group later formed several electronics-related divisions, such as Samsung Electron Devices Co., Samsung Electro-Mechanics Co., Samsung Corning Co., and Samsung Semiconductor & Telecommunications Co., and grouped them together under Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. in 1980s. Its first product was a black-and-white television set (Samsung Electronics).

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Samsung Electronics invested heavily in research and development, constructing the company as a leader in the global electronics industry. “By the 1980s Samsung was manufacturing, shipping, and selling a wide range of appliances and electronic products throughout the world” (Samsung Electronics). In 1982, it built a television assembly plant in Portugal; in 1984, it built a $25 million plant in New York; and in 1987, it built another $25 million facility in England (Samsung Electronics).

In 1993 Lee Kun-Hee, Lee Byung-Chull’s successor, sold off ten of Samsung Group's subsidiaries, downsized the company, and merged other operations to concentrate on three industries: electronics, engineering, and chemicals (Samsung Electronics).

Samsung became the largest producer of memory chips in the world in 1992. In 1995, it built its first liquid-crystal display screen, eventually equalizing its technology to Sony’s (Lee kun-hee).

Samsung has also tried hard to improve its international image. It has spent more than $6 billion since 1998 on marketing, sponsoring the last five Olympics and erecting a large video sign in Times Square in 2002 (Lee kun-hee). Samsung is very involved in the Asian Games, contributing Samsung Nations Cup Riding Competition, Samsung Running Festival, Samsung World Championship, and still many more around the globe (Samsung Electronics)

[edit] The 1990s and present
Burj Dubai Tower
Burj Dubai Tower

abc The 1990s saw Samsung rise as an international corporation. Not only did it acquire a number of businesses abroad, but also began leading the way in certain electronic components. Samsung's construction branch was awarded a contract to build one of the two Petronas Towers in Malaysia in September 1993 and the Burj Dubai in 2004, which is the tallest structure ever created by mankind. In 1996, the Samsung Group reacquired the Sungkyunkwan University foundation.

Compared to other major Korean companies, Samsung survived the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 relatively unharmed. However, Samsung Motor Co, a $5 billion venture was sold to Renault at a significant loss. Most importantly, Samsung Electronics (SEC) was officially spun-off from the Samsung Group and has since come to dominate the group and the worldwide semiconductor business, even surpassing worldwide leader Intel in investments for the 2005 fiscal year. Samsung's brand strength has greatly improved in the last few years. Considered a strong competitor by its rivals, Samsung Electronics expanded production dramatically to become the world's largest manufacturer of DRAM chips, flash memory, optical storage drives and it aims to double sales and become the top manufacturer of 20 products globally by 2010. It is now one of the world's leading manufacturers of liquid crystal displays and next generation mobile phones.

Samsung Electronics, which saw record profits and revenue in 2004 and 2005, overtook Sony as one of the world's most popular consumer electronics brands, and is now ranked #20 in the world overall.

By late 2005, Samsung had a net worth of US$77.6 billion.

[edit] Price fixing

On November 30, 2005, Samsung pled guilty to a charge it participated in DRAM price fixing collusion during 1999-2002 that damaged competition and raised PC prices. In a deal with prosecutors, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and its U.S. subsidiary, Samsung Semiconductor Inc., were to pay a $300 million fine. As a result of this investigation, Hynix was to pay $185 million in 2005, and Infineon $160 million in 2004. Micron Technology, the US firm who initiated the case, cooperated with prosecutors and no fine is expected. Also, five samsung executives along with four executive each from Infineon and Hynix and one from Elpida and one from Micron technologies recieved a prison sentence with the longest being 10 months by Young Hwan Park, president of Samsung Semiconductor Inc. [2]

In October 2006 Samsung was again subpoenaed for an industry wide investigation in price fixing SRAM, along with Mitsubishi, Sony, Toshiba, and Cypress Semiconductor.

[edit] Criticisms

To this date, Samsung maintains a strict "no labor union" policy (munojo jeongchaek) inside Korea, by closely monitoring workers and sometimes establishing "ghost labor unions" to prevent the creation of real ones.[3][4] (Under Korean law, a company can have at most one labor union.) Although this has drawn intense criticism from Korean labor activists, many conservative media, including Joongang Ilbo with its close ties with Samsung group, actually views this as a case study of why labor unions are bad for economy and should be suppressed at each company's discretion (because Samsung has been immensely successful as a company).

Recently (2007), a large number of consumers are complaining to Samsung Electronics after they found out that some LCD tvs, PC monitors and laptops they have bought under the Samsung name are actually built on mostly inferior Taiwan and China-made LCD panels. Several Samsung LCD tv and monitor models, including the 20-inch XL20 model and the LE32R8 LCD tv, are built on non-Samsung panels either because the company does not produce that specific size, or because it is more affordable.