muster of peacocks roamed, and spent a lot of time in Japan with his
second wife, Kurata Michiko, a hairdresser, and the son and daughter he
had with her.
But the tycoon had a darker side. When a government trading official
named Daniel Lee recommended the government stop earmarking
American aid money for Samsung’s sugar business—he thought American
assistance was better put to buying fertilizer and wheat, rather than sugar, a
luxury for the wealthy—his partner was abruptly accused of small-scale
corruption and jailed. “Critics,” Daniel Lee wrote, “called us puppies who
did not fear a tiger.”
The Republic of Samsung, for both good and bad, was on the ascendant.
Henry Cho recounted, “They treated me like a god.”