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Wednesday 18 October 2017

Samsung

Technical gadget giant Samsung was started on March 1, 1938 by Lee Byung-chul as a small trading company. Byung-chul was the son of a wealthy landowning family (a branch of the Gyeongju Lee clan.

Lee Byung-chul, founder of Samsung

“Samsung” is comprised of a combination of meanings: Sam (three) and Sung (stars). The stars are references to three celestial Chinese Gods who represent glory, luck and longevity.

Samsung started out with forty employees located in Su-dong (now Ingyo-dong.) It traded dried-fish, locally-grown groceries and noodles.

By 1945 Samsung was transporting goods throughout Korea and to other countries. The company was based in Seoul by 1947.

The trading firm grew to become the present-day Samsung C&T Corporation.

In the late 1960s, Samsung entered the electronics industry. Its first product was a black-and-white television set.

Lee Byung-chul and the founder of LG, Koo In-hwoi, were in-laws who deeply respected each other. However, in 1968, Lee met Koo and told him that Samsung was planning to enter electronics, which meant becoming LG's direct competitor. Angered, Koo yelled at him and left. Afterwards, the two were never close again.

The SPC-1000, introduced in March 1983, was Samsung's first personal computer. It was sold in the Korean market only and used an audio cassette tape to load and save data – the floppy drive was optional.

The SPC-1000, 

In the first quarter of 2012, Samsung Electronics became the world's largest mobile phone maker by unit sales, overtaking Nokia, which had been the market leader since 1998.

The origin of Samsung's "Galaxy" moniker was a $95 bottle of wine enjoyed by its top executives, the Terlato family’s "Galaxy" red blend. It inspired Samsung executives to later choose the name "Galaxy", which had to them a premium ring, for their phones.

Samsung accidentally issued 2,000 employees shares of stock worth US$100,000,000,000 for 37 minutes on April 8, 2018  before realizing the error. 16 employees sold the shares which the company gave them despite receiving warnings from the company. The employees who sold their shares could have gotten US$9,000,000 each.

16 employees sold during that time for approx. $9,000,000 each.

Samsung is the largest privately-owned company in the world, with its $305 billion revenue equivalent to 17% of South Korea's GDP.

Samsung is so big that they account for 15% of South Korea's entire economy. South Koreans often live in Samsung owned apartment buildings, can get treatment from Samsung-owned medical centers, go to Samsung universities, get Samsung life insurance and even end up at a Samsung funeral parlor when they die.

Schubert's Trout Quintet is used in some Samsung washing machines, to signal the end of a cycle.

The Samsung Town is a major office park in Seocho-gu in Seoul. It serves as the IT and electronics hub for Samsung.

The Samsung headquarters. By Oskar Alexanderson

Samsung also is the sponsor of several sports teams, such as the Premier League football club Chelsea between 2005-2015.

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