The Lee family is arguably South Korea’s leading industrial family due to their ownership positions in the multinational conglomerates Samsung and The CJ Group. The Lee family patriarch is Samsung founder Lee Byung-chul, who founded a trading company in 1938. The business branched out into the electronics industry in the late 1960s with their very first black-and-white television set. This would put the wheels in motion for the Lee family to make a global imprint in the electronics manufacturing sector through Samsung. The greatest era of growth for Samsung would come under the leadership of Lee Byung-chul’s son Lee Kun-Hee. In 1993 he outlined a new vision for Samsung which he called the New Management which sought to embed a sense of responsibility in every individual to transform Samsung from a lower-tier brand to a top-tier one by focusing on three key areas: design, price, and quality. From that decision, Samsung has grown into an international conglomerate that employs more than 370,000 people in 80 countries and has accounted for 17 per cent of South Korea’s GDP. Lee Kun-Hee’s brother Lee Maeng-Hee served as President of The CJ Group, a conglomerate first formed as part of the Samsung family but later spun off on its own. Lee Kun-Hee and Lee Maeng-Hee were involved in a messy and public feud that involved a lawsuit over the control of Samsung. The courts ruled in Lee Kun-Hee’s favour.
