We made our way downstairs through the lobby, decorated in the
fashion of a Bavarian hunting lodge. Our guide opened the doors to the
room where what would become known as Samsung’s revolution took
place: the main conference room.
The hotel was under renovation when I visited, so the site wasn’t
completely historically accurate. But I stood in the conference room in awe.
This was the site of the speech that kick-started a radical managerial
transformation within Samsung. It was a moment that would help redefine
the world of tech.
On the morning of June 7, 1993, the assembled Samsung executives
were seated around the table with notebooks, wearing identical white shirts
and blue or black suits. At the front of the room stood a speaker’s table
with a bed of pink flowers—a South Korean tradition. Behind it was a
lavish oil painting of the canals and townspeople of Venice.
That morning, as the chairman entered the conference room, the
Samsung executives stood up and clapped. The air in the room was heavy
with tension.
The chairman wasn’t sleeping more than two or three hours a day,
Hwang recounted. He sat down, adjusted the microphone, and, without a
script or preamble, unleashed his fury upon them for the next eight hours.
Samsung has never released the full transcript of the speech. But through
interviews with eyewitnesses, videos, media reports, and official company
materials, I was able to piece together its key elements.
“I have felt a cold sweat running down my back at the thought of this
crisis,” the chairman said, as paraphrased in an internal booklet called
Samsung’s New Management. “We are standing on the edge of a cliff facing
a life-or-death situation.
“The Cold War has ended, but a more intense economic war has begun.
In this new war, a country’s firepower will be determined by the level of its
technology,” he warned. “Many people at Samsung don’t realize how cold
and cruel this technological warfare can be.”
He was determined to cut defects to raise quality, a strategy that Sony
and Samsung’s other Japanese rivals had mastered. “At Samsung, we must
adhere to three credos: Faulty products are our enemy, faulty products are
the root of all evil, and if we produce a faulty product three times, we must
take it upon ourselves to resign.”
Over the next three days, in sessions that ranged from eight to ten hours