Go West, Young Heir
CHAIRMAN LEE II NEEDED an emissary to the rest of the world on
Samsung’s behalf. He turned to his beloved niece Miky Lee—her Korean
name is Mie-kyung—making her Samsung’s chief ambassador to the
United States.
Miky’s aesthetic sense, her people skills, and her relaxed demeanor
made her an ideal candidate to represent Samsung in New York and
Hollywood. A short, spunky thirty-something with a flair for film and the
arts, she enjoyed befriending the likes of Quincy Jones and Steven
Spielberg. She was a far cry from the typical Samsung Man (or Woman)—
a dapper employee in a formal white shirt who would have had trouble
adapting to Hollywood’s self-promoting business culture.
“She is not like Korean men, giving orders and expecting them to be
followed,” her high school English teacher told The New York Times. “To
do anything creative, you have to have a soft touch.”
For Miky, representing Samsung was nothing short of a patriotic
mission. As an assistant instructor of Korean at Harvard, where she
attended graduate school, she couldn’t help but notice how students ignored
Korean-language offerings because of Korea’s dismal international
standing. Japanese, on the other hand, was seen as cool, and Chinese as
useful.
“My lifetime obsession to promote the Korean culture started then,” she
told Bloomberg Markets.
Miky wanted to find a marketer who could help build Samsung’s brand
and presence in the minds of American consumers. Her family used
another of the chairman’s Japanese advisers, a fashion entrepreneur named
Tomio Taki.