an inevitable domino game. If Samsung Life Insurance and Samsung Fire
Insurance become bankrupt, the entire insurance industry in South Korea goes
into crisis. If employees at Samsung Group and all its supplier firms (whose
exact number is unknown to the public) lose their jobs, unemployment rate in
the country is estimated to rise by 7.1%. (Its current rate is 3.5%.)
If the Samsung Group were to fall, he goes on, the country’s National
Pension Service, a major shareholder, would lose an estimated 19 trillion
won (about $16.7 billion) in investment. And corporate taxes would
decrease by an estimated 4 trillion won (about $3.5 billion). “If the entire
Group falls, and with it multitudes of suppliers that depend solely on
Samsung, South Korea’s biggest banks are at risk of insolvency.”
It is a startling admission. South Koreans refer to it as the “Samsung
risk.” And many see it as an urgent concern.
—
IN FACT, SAMSUNG HAS no equivalent among its Silicon Valley peers. Nor
does the company have Silicon Valley’s rebellious, counterculture origins.
There is no marijuana-smoking college-dropout equivalent of Steve Jobs;
there is no mischievous Mark Zuckerberg, ranking co-eds on his dorm
room website. There is no flamboyant engineer like Sony’s Akio Morita,
who survived World War II, co-founded the company in a bombed-out
department store, and drove its success.
Sitting down for interviews in Seoul, I was often met with looks of
suspicion and distrust—even terror. A number of South Koreans told me
that I might come to harm for writing a book on Samsung.
I treated such concerns as groundless conspiracy theories. But they did
show me how much fear the company can strike in the minds of South
Koreans.
Everywhere I went in South Korea, the “Republic of Samsung” and its
imprint were inescapable.
“Do you plan to criticize Samsung?” one former senior employee asked
me over lunch.
“Samsung helped me with my magazine reporting,” I told him, “granting
me official access. But I intend to ensure that my coverage is independent
and credible. Samsung has no say over this project.”