Sony Wars
PETE SKARZYNSKI, K.T., AND Peter Arnell were given enormous freedom
by Samsung in America and were pretty much running their own show.
That is, until a Korean American named Eric Kim was hired by Samsung
Electronics as its executive vice president for marketing in 1999, and then
became its global chief marketing officer.
Samsung had never before hired an outsider into a position of such
authority at its headquarters. Before this, executives needed to be Korean
and rise through a lifetime of employment as Samsung employees. Kim
took the stage in front of four hundred Samsung employees for his
introductory speech. CEO Yun Jong-yong, who had hired Eric, sensed he
would be resented and preceded him with an introduction true to Samsung’s
heart.
If you mess with him, “I will kill you.”
Kim’s first appearance wasn’t a blistering success. A Korean who’d lived
overseas for decades, Kim wasn’t seen as a “true” Korean by this tight-knit
company, even though he felt his colleagues went out of their way to make
him feel accepted. Nor was he able to muster the fluency in Korean the
audience expected. One Samsung vice president called Kim a “kimchi-
eating American.”
“Was it hard being a Korean American there?” I asked Kim over dim
sum in Berkeley, California, where he’s now retired.
“I’m Korean,” Eric insisted in a soft tone, disagreeing with how his
colleagues viewed him and the press covered him. “I was born in Korea. I
moved to California as a very poor immigrant when I was twelve. My
Korean-language skills never improved beyond the twelve-year-old level.”
“What about your unconventional background as a marketer?” I asked.