WEBVTT - TechStuff Classic: The Samsung Story Part 2 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:12.319 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, 0:00:12.360 --> 0:00:15.480 and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:18.599 I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the 0:00:18.760 --> 0:00:22.639 Tech Are Yet. So it is Friday again. It's time 0:00:22.680 --> 0:00:26.520 for another classic episode. And last week we did the 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:30.440 Samsung Story Part one, so shocking. We're gonna do the 0:00:30.480 --> 0:00:34.160 Samsung Story Part two today. This originally published on May 0:00:34.240 --> 0:00:39.519 twenty sixth, twenty seventeen. Hope you enjoy Samsung, as it 0:00:39.560 --> 0:00:43.400 turns out, is a conglomeration of companies that do lots 0:00:43.440 --> 0:00:46.520 of different things. Electronics is just part of it. It's 0:00:46.560 --> 0:00:50.559 one of the more forward facing components, especially outside of Korea, 0:00:51.240 --> 0:00:55.440 but it's just one element of the overall company. Also, 0:00:55.520 --> 0:00:58.320 keep in mind, I'm talking about a Korean company with 0:00:58.360 --> 0:01:02.120 a lot of Korean names. So again, I apologize right 0:01:02.200 --> 0:01:05.759 up front for the numerous occasions I'm sure I will 0:01:05.800 --> 0:01:09.600 mispronounce Korean names. It is not through any lack of respect, 0:01:09.640 --> 0:01:14.160 but rather just a simple ignorance of the correct pronunciations 0:01:14.440 --> 0:01:17.720 for that language. I will do the best I can. However, 0:01:17.920 --> 0:01:20.080 it will get a little confusing because I'm going to 0:01:20.160 --> 0:01:23.959 talk a lot about the family who was in charge 0:01:23.959 --> 0:01:27.119 of Samsung, and there are an awful lot of them, 0:01:27.680 --> 0:01:29.800 but we will get to that a bit later. Now, 0:01:29.800 --> 0:01:32.920 If you remember, I left off at the point when 0:01:33.000 --> 0:01:36.880 Samsung began to produce its first televisions and washing machines. 0:01:37.400 --> 0:01:39.520 That brings us up to the nineteen seventies. So what 0:01:39.680 --> 0:01:43.440 was going on in Korea during that time? Well, you 0:01:43.520 --> 0:01:46.160 might remember in the last episode I told you that 0:01:46.280 --> 0:01:50.080 Korea had come under the rule of a military leader, 0:01:50.160 --> 0:01:55.080 a general named Bach Jonghi or also sometimes spelled Park 0:01:55.480 --> 0:02:01.480 chung Hi. These names are anglicized version of the Korean names, 0:02:02.040 --> 0:02:05.120 so often it's as close to an approximation of an 0:02:05.200 --> 0:02:10.399 anglicized pronunciation as we can get. So there are different spellings. 0:02:11.000 --> 0:02:13.840 Park Chunghi is probably the most common, but I've also 0:02:13.919 --> 0:02:18.280 seen Bach Chonghi same person. However. In fact, this is 0:02:18.280 --> 0:02:19.640 a good time for me to mention this. In the 0:02:19.639 --> 0:02:23.040 previous episode, I talked about a US backed leader, and 0:02:23.080 --> 0:02:24.920 I talked about THEIM a lot. I said Li Sung 0:02:25.000 --> 0:02:30.760 Man and also mentioned a man named singman Ri. Both 0:02:30.760 --> 0:02:34.880 of those names are actually the same person. See in 0:02:34.919 --> 0:02:38.680 the Western world, we will say a person's surname last. 0:02:39.000 --> 0:02:41.680 But in Asia and many Asian cultures at any rate, 0:02:41.840 --> 0:02:45.720 you say the surname first, So Lee is the surname 0:02:46.040 --> 0:02:50.440 Li sungman or singman Ri is the way that we 0:02:50.480 --> 0:02:54.400 often see it spelled, depending upon the source you're looking at. 0:02:54.520 --> 0:02:56.399 So I know it gets a little confusing, but these 0:02:56.400 --> 0:02:59.280 are the same people. They are just anglicized versions of 0:02:59.320 --> 0:03:03.120 the name. Anyway, let's go back to Park Chunghi, the general, 0:03:03.240 --> 0:03:06.200 the person who had been in charge of South Korea 0:03:06.800 --> 0:03:10.440 in nineteen seventy two. He put the country under martial 0:03:10.560 --> 0:03:14.399 law and solidified his power in South Korea, they would 0:03:14.440 --> 0:03:19.600 hold elections and Park Chunghi would win those elections. But 0:03:19.880 --> 0:03:21.520 there were a lot of people who essentially said that 0:03:21.520 --> 0:03:25.280 Park Chunghi was really just a military dictator. Just a 0:03:25.280 --> 0:03:27.680 military dictator is probably the wrong way of saying it, 0:03:28.000 --> 0:03:30.240 But he was a military dictator as opposed to a 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:34.600 legally elected president, according to whom you ask. Meanwhile, at 0:03:34.600 --> 0:03:37.800 the same time, South Korea government officials were starting up 0:03:37.840 --> 0:03:42.680 talks with their counterparts in North Korea, and the two 0:03:42.720 --> 0:03:48.320 countries talked about wanting to reunite, to have a reunification 0:03:48.600 --> 0:03:51.280 of Korea. They said that there were a lot of 0:03:51.280 --> 0:03:53.520 requirements for that. One of the big ones was that 0:03:53.600 --> 0:03:58.640 they demanded no outside interference. They didn't want other entities 0:03:58.640 --> 0:04:02.440 coming into Korea to try and guide the process. Remember, 0:04:02.520 --> 0:04:05.440 Korea had been the subject of a lot of interference 0:04:05.640 --> 0:04:09.040 from the Soviet Union, from the United States of America 0:04:09.160 --> 0:04:13.400 before that, Japan, and China, so they were really determined 0:04:13.440 --> 0:04:17.560 to do this themselves. But spoiler alert, that never really happened. 0:04:18.640 --> 0:04:23.200 In nineteen seventy nine, the head of the Korean Intelligence Service, 0:04:23.600 --> 0:04:30.240 Kim jagyu, assassinated Park Chunghi, so, the head of the 0:04:30.360 --> 0:04:35.880 Korean version of the CIA, assassinated the president of the country. 0:04:37.279 --> 0:04:41.200 After that, there was a brief period of civilian rule 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:44.919 where the Prime Minister assumed roles of the president before 0:04:45.640 --> 0:04:48.960 another general. This one fellow by the name of General 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:53.560 Chu du Pan, receives power in nineteen eighty and thus 0:04:53.600 --> 0:04:56.680 returned the country back to a dictatorship with token elections, 0:04:57.160 --> 0:04:59.159 and that would continue to be the case until the 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:02.920 late nineteen eighties. So Korea still had a tumultuous and 0:05:03.080 --> 0:05:09.359 often violent power structure, with people struggling to rule the 0:05:09.400 --> 0:05:13.600 country in different ways. Remember, even though you know you 0:05:13.640 --> 0:05:17.839 would say that that Park Chunghi was a dictator. He 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:21.080 was largely seen as someone who worked very hard to 0:05:21.160 --> 0:05:26.760 improve conditions in Korea, so he wasn't just exploiting his power, 0:05:27.400 --> 0:05:30.279 at least not in the view of many people. However, 0:05:30.720 --> 0:05:33.960 that being said, he also wasn't willing to have a 0:05:33.960 --> 0:05:37.360 transition of that power, and thus eventually he was assassinated. 0:05:37.920 --> 0:05:41.599 So very complicated political structure in Korea at the time, 0:05:41.760 --> 0:05:45.839 and despite all that political chaos, Samsung continued to do well. 0:05:47.000 --> 0:05:49.320 I'll talk more about how they did that a little 0:05:49.360 --> 0:05:52.719 bit later in this episode. The company had, for one thing, 0:05:52.760 --> 0:05:55.920 diversified quite a bit. It was getting into so many 0:05:56.000 --> 0:05:59.400 different industries and it was playing a key component in 0:05:59.440 --> 0:06:02.960 the economy of South Korea. It was also creating Korean 0:06:03.040 --> 0:06:07.560 electronics with Korean parts, so they weren't importing elements and 0:06:07.600 --> 0:06:11.080 then building television sets and then selling them. They were 0:06:11.279 --> 0:06:15.119 making all of this stuff piece by piece. This helped 0:06:15.160 --> 0:06:18.720 establish Korea as one of what was called the Four 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:22.800 Little Dragons. The Four Little Dragons were nations in East 0:06:22.880 --> 0:06:28.440 Asia that were very rapidly expanding economically and technologically, and 0:06:28.520 --> 0:06:33.719 they also included Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong, so these 0:06:33.960 --> 0:06:39.200 Asian countries were really quickly catching up to other nations 0:06:39.240 --> 0:06:44.720 like Japan and China. In nineteen seventy seven, Samsung began 0:06:44.839 --> 0:06:48.719 producing color televisions and exporting them to Panama. So this 0:06:48.880 --> 0:06:52.600 was a humble step toward Samsung becoming a global player 0:06:53.000 --> 0:06:57.280 in consumer electronics. Before that, they had really been selling 0:06:57.320 --> 0:07:01.400 mainly to South Korea, but now they were expanding beyond that, 0:07:02.520 --> 0:07:05.880 and they were determined to really continue this level of 0:07:05.920 --> 0:07:10.720 success with all different types of electronics. Around the same time, 0:07:11.320 --> 0:07:15.200 Samsung began to produce other products in consumer electronics, including 0:07:15.280 --> 0:07:18.800 air conditioners, which I have covered in previous episodes of 0:07:18.840 --> 0:07:21.440 tech Stuff and the microwave, and there is also a 0:07:21.480 --> 0:07:24.640 classic episode of tech Stuff about how the microwave works. 0:07:25.080 --> 0:07:26.840 So I'm not going to go into a full explanation, 0:07:26.960 --> 0:07:29.720 but because this episode is going to be a lot 0:07:29.800 --> 0:07:34.720 about corporate politics and actual politics because of the complicated 0:07:36.000 --> 0:07:39.760 nature of Korean business, I thought why not go ahead 0:07:39.800 --> 0:07:42.640 and have at least a brief explanation on the science 0:07:42.680 --> 0:07:47.400 slash technology side of microwaves to really have this podcast 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:49.480 earn the name of tech Stuff, because otherwise we're just 0:07:49.480 --> 0:07:52.400 going to be talking about lots of economics, politics, and 0:07:53.160 --> 0:07:56.040 very complicated issues. So I'm going to give you some 0:07:56.080 --> 0:08:00.480 highlights of how microwave ovens work. So, the radiation micro waves. 0:08:01.480 --> 0:08:06.160 Microwaves are in the electromagnetic spectrum in between infrared and 0:08:06.440 --> 0:08:10.560 radio waves, so they are longer waves than visible light. 0:08:11.120 --> 0:08:14.000 Microwave ovens produce microwaves that a frequency of two point 0:08:14.000 --> 0:08:17.000 four or five gigaherts. That's two point four or five 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:22.160 billion wavelengths passing through a given point within a second. Now, 0:08:22.280 --> 0:08:27.520 certain stuff like fats, sugars, and water absorb waves that 0:08:27.560 --> 0:08:30.440 are at this two point four or five gigahertz frequency. 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:35.320 As they absorb those waves, their atoms begin to get excited. 0:08:35.360 --> 0:08:38.200 That means they start to move around, and we call 0:08:38.240 --> 0:08:41.240 this heat. Right, if atoms are moving around a lot, 0:08:41.360 --> 0:08:44.840 they are warm, they're giving off heat, and they're giving 0:08:44.880 --> 0:08:48.319 off that form of energy. Likewise, if you apply heat 0:08:48.480 --> 0:08:51.920 to materials, you start to make their atoms move around 0:08:51.960 --> 0:08:57.080 more rapidly. So stuff like glass, ceramics, and plastics do 0:08:57.160 --> 0:09:00.719 not absorb waves at that frequency. So if you were 0:09:00.720 --> 0:09:06.000 to put a glass like a glass container in a 0:09:06.040 --> 0:09:08.240 microwave and you turned it on and then you took 0:09:08.280 --> 0:09:10.880 the glass container out, assuming there was nothing on it 0:09:10.920 --> 0:09:14.160 to heat up to absorb those microwaves. It should not 0:09:14.280 --> 0:09:18.760 be really any significantly warmer to the touch, So that's 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:20.880 why the food in a microwave will heat up, but 0:09:20.920 --> 0:09:25.599 the containers do not. Metal, by the way, reflects microwaves, 0:09:25.640 --> 0:09:28.880 which is why the interior of most microwave ovens tends 0:09:28.920 --> 0:09:31.760 to be metallic. It's to reflect waves back into the 0:09:31.800 --> 0:09:34.120 oven in order to give the food a better chance 0:09:34.160 --> 0:09:36.839 at absorbing the waves and heating up and cooking in 0:09:36.880 --> 0:09:39.240 the process. This is also why we say that this 0:09:39.840 --> 0:09:43.680 kind of food cooks from the inside out, and you're 0:09:43.679 --> 0:09:47.480 not applying any heat to a surface, so you don't 0:09:47.600 --> 0:09:50.920 get that seared nature you would get if you were 0:09:50.960 --> 0:09:55.000 to say, cook in a pan. One other thing, microwaves 0:09:55.040 --> 0:09:59.040 are not a form of ionizing radiation. That means that 0:09:59.240 --> 0:10:03.360 the waves don't carry enough energy to ionize atoms or molecules, 0:10:04.000 --> 0:10:07.600 or to simplify it even further, it means microwaves don't 0:10:07.640 --> 0:10:12.319 pack enough of a punch to strip electrons away from atoms. 0:10:13.200 --> 0:10:18.360 Ionizing radiation includes stuff like ultraviolet radiation, X rays and 0:10:18.480 --> 0:10:21.840 gamma rays, and they do have enough energy to strip 0:10:21.880 --> 0:10:25.320 away electrons, and if you are exposed to that sort 0:10:25.320 --> 0:10:28.880 of radiation, you can suffer immediate and long term damage 0:10:28.880 --> 0:10:33.200 as a result. So in a short term, very brief exposure, 0:10:33.520 --> 0:10:37.120 you might suffer burns. In the case of ultraviolet radiation, 0:10:37.200 --> 0:10:38.679 it may take a little bit longer for you to 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:41.000 actually suffer burns, but you know that's what sunburn is. 0:10:41.840 --> 0:10:45.520 In the long run, you're talking about bigger risks like cancer, 0:10:45.840 --> 0:10:49.520 so you want to really minimize your exposure to ionizing radiation. 0:10:49.640 --> 0:10:53.360 But happily, microwaves are not in that category, nor are 0:10:53.480 --> 0:10:57.959 radio waves. It's the stuff in those bigger wavelengths. They 0:10:57.960 --> 0:10:59.920 don't have the energy to do that, which is why 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:04.000 you shouldn't have to worry about microwaves or radio waves 0:11:04.120 --> 0:11:07.440 or anything like that causing you any harm. They just 0:11:07.520 --> 0:11:10.480 don't have the energy to do that to you. Whereas 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:13.120 X rays, gamma rays, that kind of stuff certainly has 0:11:13.160 --> 0:11:15.600 that sort of energy. Now, if you want to learn 0:11:15.640 --> 0:11:19.440 more about how microwaves work, including how they actually generate 0:11:19.559 --> 0:11:22.480 the microwave radiation in the first place, make sure you 0:11:22.600 --> 0:11:25.840 check out that Classic Tech Stuff episode. It is titled 0:11:26.360 --> 0:11:32.040 how microwave ovens Work. Yeah, we thought long and hard 0:11:32.040 --> 0:11:36.240 about that title anyway, that episode came out way back 0:11:36.280 --> 0:11:39.880 on March first, twenty ten. Let's get back to Samsung. 0:11:40.480 --> 0:11:44.880 In nineteen eighty Samsung made another big acquisition. Remember that's 0:11:44.920 --> 0:11:47.760 how this company was really growing. It was buying up 0:11:47.800 --> 0:11:50.280 other companies and getting involved in as many different industries 0:11:50.280 --> 0:11:54.360 as possible. This time it was a telecommunications hardware company 0:11:54.400 --> 0:11:58.720 called hanguk Jinja Tungsen. The number one product the company 0:11:58.760 --> 0:12:02.439 made was telephones boards, so they were starting to install 0:12:02.520 --> 0:12:06.680 more telephone infrastructure in Korea. Samsung soon expanded this to 0:12:06.720 --> 0:12:11.120 produce telephone and faxt systems and much later on mobile phones. 0:12:11.520 --> 0:12:17.080 More on Samsung's mobile phones. A bit later, Samsung expanded 0:12:17.320 --> 0:12:21.360 the operations of its electronics division into other nations, including 0:12:21.360 --> 0:12:23.880 the United Kingdom in the US, and the company had 0:12:23.920 --> 0:12:27.640 become an empire. And that's when it lost its emperor. 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:32.200 It was nineteen eighty seven and Li Biongchol, who was 0:12:32.240 --> 0:12:35.480 the man who founded Samsung when he was just twenty 0:12:35.520 --> 0:12:39.560 eight years old, passed away. Now, if you listened to 0:12:39.559 --> 0:12:41.800 our last episode, you know he had come from a 0:12:41.800 --> 0:12:45.559 wealthy family to begin with, but his company had elevated 0:12:45.640 --> 0:12:51.960 him and his family to truly wealthy status billionaires. Now 0:12:52.000 --> 0:12:54.120 at the time of his death, he had one of 0:12:54.120 --> 0:12:57.679 the largest private collections of Korean art in all of 0:12:57.679 --> 0:13:00.240 the nation, which was opened up to the public after 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:04.880 his passing. He had ten children, six daughters and four sons. 0:13:05.200 --> 0:13:07.880 There were also rumors of him having other children with 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:12.360 other women besides his wife in Korea, but that was 0:13:13.040 --> 0:13:15.840 a rumor. That the family is very secretive in the 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:21.880 first place, so it's not like this was necessarily open information. Now, 0:13:21.880 --> 0:13:23.640 at the end of this podcast, I'm going to trace 0:13:23.679 --> 0:13:28.640 the very complicated history of Lee's family. I'll do this 0:13:28.679 --> 0:13:32.120 because in Korea it is still traditional for families to 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:36.400 keep control over businesses, so you can inherit a position 0:13:36.440 --> 0:13:39.240 of leadership in a company. The world of board of 0:13:39.280 --> 0:13:42.439 directors and choosing a CEO isn't the way things are 0:13:42.480 --> 0:13:45.400 done in Korea, at least not for a lot of companies. 0:13:45.840 --> 0:13:50.000 They follow a more traditional pathway and that has caused 0:13:50.040 --> 0:13:53.800 some consternation. As it turns out, now the company split 0:13:53.920 --> 0:13:57.840 into four major business groups that eventually became their own 0:13:57.960 --> 0:14:03.200 individual companies, and at least according to the people running 0:14:03.240 --> 0:14:07.120 those companies, have nothing to do directly with one another. Anymore. 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:13.280 Those include the Shinsegae Group or Shinsega I guess group, 0:14:13.320 --> 0:14:16.520 I should say, which is mostly concerned with retail businesses, 0:14:16.559 --> 0:14:18.960 you know, department stores, that kind of thing. There's the 0:14:19.040 --> 0:14:24.720 CJ Group, which includes businesses in food, chemical, entertainment industries. 0:14:25.240 --> 0:14:30.360 There's the Hensall Group, which includes telecommunications and paper manufacturing industries. 0:14:30.600 --> 0:14:32.840 And then you have the Samsung Group, which is pretty 0:14:32.920 --> 0:14:37.120 much everything else. So for right now, the only important 0:14:37.120 --> 0:14:39.520 thing you need to remember is that Lee byungchal, the 0:14:39.640 --> 0:14:42.600 founder of Samsung, died in nineteen eighty seven, and I'll 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:47.320 try to focus exclusively on Samsung Electronics from here on out, 0:14:47.560 --> 0:14:50.320 though I should mention the company as a whole consisted 0:14:50.360 --> 0:14:55.560 of eighty smaller companies at one point or another, eighty. 0:14:55.960 --> 0:14:58.840 It was a really a conglomerate in the true sense 0:14:58.840 --> 0:15:03.080 of the word. It was a company filled with other companies. Many, 0:15:03.640 --> 0:15:06.320 in fact, most of those companies had nothing to do 0:15:06.400 --> 0:15:11.080 with consumer electronics. In the late eighties and early nineties, 0:15:11.240 --> 0:15:16.000 Samsung Electronics began opening manufacturing facilities in different parts of 0:15:16.040 --> 0:15:18.840 the world. The company was really making a name for itself, 0:15:18.880 --> 0:15:22.280 becoming a global player in the electronics space. This is 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:25.440 pretty remarkable when you remember that companies like Sony had 0:15:25.480 --> 0:15:29.600 been in the electronics industry for decades, whereas Samsung really 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:32.320 only began to dive into it in nineteen sixty nine 0:15:32.440 --> 0:15:35.240 nineteen seventy, so they had a lot of catching up 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:39.200 to do. Samsung continued to expand the types of electronics 0:15:39.240 --> 0:15:41.640 it produced in the nineteen eighties, like I said, with 0:15:41.720 --> 0:15:44.800 air conditioners and microwaves starting off, but by nineteen eighty 0:15:44.800 --> 0:15:47.480 three the company also began to get into the personal 0:15:47.520 --> 0:15:53.280 computer business. The very first Samsung computer was the SPC 0:15:53.560 --> 0:15:57.360 one thousand, which came out in March nineteen eighty three, 0:15:57.720 --> 0:16:00.720 and it was an eight bit personal comput which looked 0:16:00.720 --> 0:16:04.800 more like a giant electronic typewriter. It had sixty four 0:16:04.960 --> 0:16:10.960 whole kilobytes of RAM and before megahertz processor. Yeah it was. 0:16:11.920 --> 0:16:15.000 From the time it was, you know, it was good, 0:16:15.960 --> 0:16:21.320 but by today's standards it is it is almost laughably underpowered. 0:16:22.160 --> 0:16:25.000 But we have Moore's law to thank for that. The 0:16:25.040 --> 0:16:28.800 computer included the keyboard, a game pad, external disk drives, 0:16:28.840 --> 0:16:30.840 and a TV like monitor and you would hook them 0:16:30.880 --> 0:16:32.640 all up and then you'd be able to run stuff 0:16:32.920 --> 0:16:38.080 using the DOS operating system. Good times in nineteen eighty four, 0:16:38.400 --> 0:16:42.320 Samsung began to export VCRs to the United States. And 0:16:42.360 --> 0:16:45.200 I've covered VCRs in the past, including a deep dive 0:16:45.240 --> 0:16:48.840 on the format wars between VHS and Betamax, so I'm 0:16:48.880 --> 0:16:50.920 not going to really dive into it again. Here you 0:16:50.960 --> 0:16:53.160 can listen to that classic episode of tech Stuff if 0:16:53.200 --> 0:16:56.840 you like. And in nineteen eighty six, Samsung created what 0:16:57.000 --> 0:17:02.080 was then the smallest videotape recorder, a four millimeter videotape recorder. 0:17:02.520 --> 0:17:05.040 By the end of the nineteen eighties, the company's products 0:17:05.040 --> 0:17:07.800 could be found on store shelves around the world, so 0:17:07.840 --> 0:17:12.800 they really made rapid progress. From the mid seventies up 0:17:12.840 --> 0:17:15.840 to the late eighties, TVs were still leading the way, 0:17:16.040 --> 0:17:20.200 with Samsung's twenty million color television produced in nineteen eighty nine. 0:17:21.480 --> 0:17:24.520 The company developed its first mobile phone handset in nineteen 0:17:24.640 --> 0:17:27.480 ninety one, though it would continue to work on the 0:17:27.480 --> 0:17:30.919 software side and the systems side for another year. By 0:17:31.000 --> 0:17:34.119 nineteen ninety two, Samsung had become the global leader in 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:38.199 producing memory chips for electronics, so essentially RAM and it 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:43.040 fell only behind Intel for chip making in general, so 0:17:43.080 --> 0:17:47.359 Intel was the number one producer of computer chips In 0:17:47.440 --> 0:17:50.600 nineteen ninety two, and Samsung was number two, again, a 0:17:50.680 --> 0:17:54.440 remarkable story for a company that had only recently started 0:17:54.440 --> 0:17:58.639 to get into electronics at all. Samsung pioneered work in 0:17:58.680 --> 0:18:02.119 building LCD display in the mid nineties, and if you 0:18:02.160 --> 0:18:04.680 listen to my history of TV series, you know that 0:18:04.800 --> 0:18:08.359 the LCD panels really helped push televisions into a new era, 0:18:08.800 --> 0:18:12.320 allowing for a thinner form factor in flat screen TVs. 0:18:12.960 --> 0:18:16.680 Samsung Electronics would end up making millions of dollars by 0:18:16.760 --> 0:18:20.479 licensing LCD panel technology to other companies that became a 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:24.720 chief source of revenue for the for the Samsung Electronics division. 0:18:25.320 --> 0:18:29.560 Also in nineteen ninety two, Samsung began manufacturing in China 0:18:29.920 --> 0:18:33.359 and producing computer components such as RAM and hard disk drives, 0:18:33.640 --> 0:18:36.600 with a two hundred and fifty megabyte drive released that year, 0:18:37.119 --> 0:18:39.520 which again sounds like nothing at all. Two hundred and 0:18:39.520 --> 0:18:42.600 fifty megabytes. I mean, you can get multi gigs on 0:18:42.640 --> 0:18:45.159 a single flash drive these days, but back then it 0:18:45.160 --> 0:18:49.479 was pretty impressive. Samsung was also producing industrial robots at 0:18:49.480 --> 0:18:54.040 this time and managed to hit the ten million products 0:18:54.080 --> 0:18:57.040 shipped by the end of nineteen ninety two, and by products, 0:18:57.080 --> 0:19:00.840 i'm talking specifically robots they produced ten milli billion industrial 0:19:00.920 --> 0:19:05.360 robots by the end of nineteen ninety two. That's pretty incredible. Now, 0:19:05.359 --> 0:19:08.080 I've got a lot more to talk about with Samsung's electronics, 0:19:08.240 --> 0:19:10.520 but before I dive into the next section, let's take 0:19:10.520 --> 0:19:21.320 a quick break to thank our sponsor. In nineteen ninety three, 0:19:21.400 --> 0:19:27.200 Samsung's Advanced Institute of Technology, also known as SAIT or SAT, 0:19:28.119 --> 0:19:32.800 developed the first digital versatile disc recorder or dvd R device. 0:19:34.119 --> 0:19:36.399 I guess I mean it couldn't have been the DVD 0:19:36.480 --> 0:19:40.040 we all know, because that didn't exist in nineteen ninety three. 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:42.720 That wouldn't be introduced until nineteen ninety five as a 0:19:42.800 --> 0:19:47.800 joint project between Sony and Panasonic. Honestly, I'm not really 0:19:47.880 --> 0:19:51.680 sure how Samsung's device fits into the history of DVDs 0:19:51.920 --> 0:19:55.479 and dvd rs. In particular, I found the entry that 0:19:55.560 --> 0:19:59.960 the company first produced this first DVD R in nineteen 0:20:00.160 --> 0:20:04.879 ninety three on Samsung's actual website, so this is according 0:20:04.920 --> 0:20:07.159 to the company itself. But that really strikes me as 0:20:07.200 --> 0:20:10.119 strange because as far as I know, the standard didn't 0:20:10.119 --> 0:20:12.480 really exist until nineteen ninety five. So how do you 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:16.240 produce a product two years before you've figured out the standard. 0:20:17.240 --> 0:20:20.880 It's possible that the entry is erroneous, but it did 0:20:20.920 --> 0:20:23.359 come from Samsung itself, so I thought it would include it, so, 0:20:24.280 --> 0:20:26.480 you know, grain of salt. It may very well be 0:20:26.560 --> 0:20:29.359 that they produced a DVDR on an early version of 0:20:29.400 --> 0:20:32.760 what would become the standard in ninety five, but it 0:20:32.800 --> 0:20:36.439 just seems a bit early to me. Totally possible, just 0:20:36.880 --> 0:20:39.359 something that I did not hear about when I was 0:20:39.440 --> 0:20:43.879 researching DVDs years ago. In the mid nineties, Samsung products 0:20:43.920 --> 0:20:47.359 began to number on the top sellers for certain categories 0:20:47.400 --> 0:20:51.879 like LCD screens. Samsung was definitely leading the way there. Meanwhile, 0:20:52.240 --> 0:20:55.800 Lee kun He, who was a son of Li b 0:20:55.840 --> 0:20:59.160 yung Chol. Remember I said Lie Byung Chol had ten children. Well, 0:20:59.240 --> 0:21:02.919 Lee kun He, the third son. He would join the 0:21:03.080 --> 0:21:06.960 International Olympic Committee in the mid nineties, and that move 0:21:07.480 --> 0:21:12.680 is really important to note because it illustrates how critical 0:21:12.720 --> 0:21:16.840 a role Samsung was to the country and economy of Korea, 0:21:17.359 --> 0:21:20.600 and it also showed how critical the Lee family was 0:21:20.720 --> 0:21:23.840 and how strong their political influence was at the time. 0:21:24.560 --> 0:21:26.960 I have a lot more to say about that. Toward 0:21:27.040 --> 0:21:31.000 the end of this episode. In ninety four, Samsung unveiled 0:21:31.040 --> 0:21:35.440 the first four power zoom camera that came from Samsung Aeronautics, 0:21:35.760 --> 0:21:40.080 and in nineteen ninety five, Samsung launched the Samsung Entertainment Group. 0:21:40.480 --> 0:21:44.719 That same year site you know sait showed off a 0:21:44.760 --> 0:21:48.199 real time MPEG three technology. And then there was a 0:21:48.240 --> 0:21:51.359 story from that same year or around ninety five. I 0:21:51.359 --> 0:21:55.040 guess that Lee Kunhe, who again was the head of 0:21:55.080 --> 0:21:58.720 Samsung Electronics at that time and in fact still is today, 0:21:59.119 --> 0:22:04.240 ordered an entire your inventory of smartphones destroyed because they 0:22:04.520 --> 0:22:08.679 apparently did not work properly. So the story was that 0:22:08.800 --> 0:22:13.240 an early smartphone really an internet connected phone, it wasn't 0:22:13.320 --> 0:22:17.240 a smartphone the way we would imagine today, didn't work 0:22:17.280 --> 0:22:21.359 properly as it came out of production, and so rather 0:22:21.440 --> 0:22:26.359 than trying to fix the inventory, leekhen He just ordered 0:22:26.400 --> 0:22:30.080 them all to be burned. Samsung obviously didn't give up 0:22:30.080 --> 0:22:33.040 on the mobile business, and in fact, eventually the mobile 0:22:33.040 --> 0:22:36.040 business would become one of the most profitable divisions within 0:22:36.119 --> 0:22:41.119 the country the year twenty sixty notwithstanding, and in nineteen 0:22:41.200 --> 0:22:43.480 ninety six, the company produced what it claimed to be 0:22:43.600 --> 0:22:48.680 the fastest central processing unit chip, the fastest CPU. They 0:22:48.720 --> 0:22:52.600 called it the Alpha. In nineteen ninety seven, South Korea, 0:22:52.640 --> 0:22:56.640 along with countries like Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, were 0:22:56.640 --> 0:23:01.199 all caught in a terrible financial crisis. It began in 0:23:01.280 --> 0:23:05.119 Thailand with the collapse of Thailand's national currency, and that 0:23:05.160 --> 0:23:07.919 created a sort of ripple effect, and South Korea was 0:23:07.960 --> 0:23:10.720 caught in it. In fact, you could argue caught some 0:23:10.800 --> 0:23:13.880 of the worst of it, with national debts surging as 0:23:13.880 --> 0:23:17.639 a result. Samsung was affected by this problem just like 0:23:17.720 --> 0:23:20.760 other companies were, although Samsung was in good position to 0:23:20.840 --> 0:23:23.160 be able to weather the storm better than a lot 0:23:23.200 --> 0:23:28.200 of its competitors. According to the company's website, Samsung reduced 0:23:28.280 --> 0:23:31.679 the number of affiliated companies to forty five, which is 0:23:31.720 --> 0:23:35.120 still an enormous number of affiliates, right, I mean, that's 0:23:35.119 --> 0:23:39.080 a big conglomerate, and keep in mind this is family 0:23:39.200 --> 0:23:42.919 owned businesses. The company ended up laying off about fifty 0:23:43.160 --> 0:23:47.840 thousand employees and sold ten business units. And one of 0:23:47.840 --> 0:23:51.080 the businesses Samsung sold off was its motor vehicle business 0:23:51.840 --> 0:23:54.280 or it used to be Samsung Motors, but the company 0:23:54.359 --> 0:23:57.840 sold off its interest to Renault at a big loss. Renault. 0:23:58.720 --> 0:24:02.480 Samsung is mostly owned by Renault, like eighty percent ownership 0:24:02.840 --> 0:24:05.639 and less than twenty percent of that ownership falls to Samsung. 0:24:06.240 --> 0:24:09.920 In the late nineteen nineties, Samsung began to produce larger 0:24:10.040 --> 0:24:13.639 LCD screens and they ushered in a new era of 0:24:13.800 --> 0:24:16.760 large flat screen televisions and monitors, and they also started 0:24:16.760 --> 0:24:21.000 mass producing digital televisions. The semiconductor branch of the company 0:24:21.080 --> 0:24:24.760 was busy creating RAM and flash based chips, and in 0:24:24.840 --> 0:24:28.919 nineteen ninety nine, Samsung launched a smartphone. This would be 0:24:29.160 --> 0:24:32.439 a true Internet capable mobile phone handset. But keep in 0:24:32.480 --> 0:24:35.960 mind again, nineteen ninety nine smartphones are not the same 0:24:36.040 --> 0:24:39.159 thing as the smartphones of today. You're still talking about 0:24:39.240 --> 0:24:42.199 pretty simple form factors, not the big touch screens that 0:24:42.240 --> 0:24:46.800 we think about when we use smartphones these days. Now, 0:24:46.960 --> 0:24:49.480 the turn of the millennium, you know, around two thousand, 0:24:49.600 --> 0:24:53.919 Samsung got into the HDTV game. High definition television was 0:24:53.960 --> 0:24:56.480 still pretty young. I mean, it had been pioneered in 0:24:56.480 --> 0:25:00.720 the nineties, but two thousand was when consumers were starting 0:25:00.760 --> 0:25:03.439 to really look at HDTV for the first time in 0:25:03.480 --> 0:25:06.439 a serious way, and Samsung was able to secure a 0:25:06.440 --> 0:25:10.440 spot among giants in the industry like Panasonic and Sony. 0:25:11.080 --> 0:25:13.840 Samsung Television's remained one of the top brands on the market, 0:25:13.880 --> 0:25:17.399 so it's a real triumph for the company to get 0:25:17.720 --> 0:25:21.600 their products right next to these other big name brands, 0:25:22.200 --> 0:25:27.080 considering that they had a much much shorter history in 0:25:27.119 --> 0:25:32.880 the consumer electronics field. Through sheer willpower and lots of investments, 0:25:33.000 --> 0:25:35.520 they were able to do this. By two thousand and one, 0:25:35.600 --> 0:25:40.240 the company's subsidiary, Samsung Techwin would become the supplier for 0:25:40.480 --> 0:25:43.919 engine parts for the Airbus A three eighty and for 0:25:44.040 --> 0:25:47.800