Korean soldiers who secretly befriend each other at the demilitarized zone
(DMZ). It was a social commentary on the tragedy of the national division,
and it resonated with South Koreans.
Miky’s cinematic success helped fuel a cultural renaissance known as
the Korean wave, in response to the growing popularity of Korean music,
cinema, and food around the world. She never returned to the Samsung
empire—which had to close its struggling film company, Samsung
Entertainment, in January 1999 after three and a half years of operation.
At IDS the growing neglect from Samsung’s highest leaders, and
burgeoning resistance from the bureaucracy of Samsung’s middle
managers, led Bruce and Miho to leave the company in September 1998.
Their legacy, however, would continue to define Samsung’s design ethos.
The company continued their practice of sending its designers on world
tours to find inspiration for televisions and smartphones.
In 2001 IDS was merged with another Samsung institute, the Samsung
Art and Design Institute (or SADI).
“I call it Spartan creativity,” Rich Park, chair of SADI’s product design
department, told me on an official company trip in 2010. “The train’s
coming and you better get off the railroad fast.”
—
AS CHAIRMAN LEE PUT on a progressive face for his American guests in
the mid-1990s, he was being enmeshed in an investigation into money he
and eight other business leaders had paid to a former Korean dictator, Roh
Tae-woo, in the 1980s.
Prosecutors announced they were trying to end the “Korean tradition of
collusive ties between politics and business.”
The chairman was called in for ten hours of questioning; he insisted that
he had given about $10.5 million to Roh Tae-woo, strictly as a “donation.”
But prosecutors noted that as Samsung’s cash made its way to the
government’s coffers, his father’s business seemed to get the government
licenses it needed to expand.
“Back in the old days, everything was done that way,” Henry Cho, the
chairman’s nephew, told me.
As the investigation unfolded, formal accusations followed.
“From Samsung Group Chairman Lee Kun-hee (53 years old),