Samsung: The Tech Monster That Conquered the World

nonfiction When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. SAMSUNG RISINGThe Inside Story of the South Korean Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer TechBy Geoffrey Cain Long before “Parasite” won the Oscar for Best Picture and K-pop groups performed on “The Tonight Show,” South Korea’s best-known export was Samsung, an obscure maker of cheap microwaves that Western expatriates in the country had taken to calling “Sam-suck. ” Today, Samsung is a household name, and a bigger smartphone maker than Apple. But its path to the top was strewn with secret deals, price fixing, bribery, tax evasion and more, all of it overseen by an ultrasecretive, ultrarich family ready to use every means at its disposal to stay in command.

The journalist Geoffrey Cain tells this story in “Samsung Rising,” and in his account both the good and bad of Samsung were imprinted upon it in its earliest decades. The company was founded in 1938 as a shop selling vegetables and dried fish. South Korea after the war was a poor backwater. And as Samsung’s founder, Lee Byung-chul, expanded into sugar, finance, chemicals, electronics and beyond, he felt he was building not just a business, but the entire nation of South Korea along with it.

Over-the-top, world-conquering ambition became a Samsung signature, as did unquestioning reverence for company brass and military-style discipline. Cain describes a leaked video in which seas of Samsung recruits parade in formation, holding up placards to form moving patterns. “It was amazing, scary and weird,” one employee told Cain. South Korea’s leaders were mostly happy to accommodate Samsung’s ambitions, and by the 1960s the company was already a symbol for how political connections could lead to great riches.

Samsung’s coziness with the government grew as the company did, helping its chairman, Lee Kun-hee, twice be granted presidential pardons for white-collar crimes. Today, across the Republic of Samsung, as South Korean cynics call their country, it can feel impossible to escape the company’s influence, which stretches from gadgets to hospitals to art. (A Samsung heiress, Miky Lee, was the executive producer of “Parasite.

“”) Cain lived in South Korea on and off for years between 2009 and 2016.”