One of the biggest surprises in Samsung Rising has to do with the nature of Samsung, the company, itself. Samsung is not a traditional (to westerners, at least) conglomerate with a head office, assorted business units and one set of shareholders. It is, in fact, a chaebol, a South Korean multi-industry entity, where individual companies have cross-holdings of shares that are ultimately tied to a controlling family. If it sounds complex, it is. This web of ownership was built with the express intention of keeping control of the company within the Lee family whose patriarch, Lee Byung-chul, founded it in 1938.
Samsung is entwined with the South Korean national identity in much the same way that Nokia used to be in Finland. It accounts for more than ten percent of South Korea's GDP and employs over three hundred thousand people. It is, perhaps, best known for its smartphones today, but it also produces heavy machinery, offers insurance and manages hospitals. Samsung Heavy Industries is the second largest shipyard in the world (right after Hyundai, a hometown rival). It is revered by locals. Mothers want their sons to work for Samsung.
The central theme here is control. When Galaxy Note 7s, advanced mega-smartphones, start exploding in users' hands, Samsung doesn't acknowledge fault. It blames suppliers, delays a recall and, mostly, stays mum. A heavy culture of obedience and top-down management had created a situation, where nobody dared to acknowledge. As airlines started banning the product, Samsung’s management slowly came around and issued a full recall. But what mysterious consortium made the decision in the end? Unfortunately Cain’s access doesn’t extend that far.
Geoffrey Cain is not Korean and, therefore, an outsider. This both benefits and hinders the story. Cain wasn't born into the cult of Samsung, he moved to South Korea as an expat. This makes the story easier to follow. Cain slowly teaches the reader the same things he had to learn about Samsung and its legacy. The company is the source of intense pride, and more recently, scrutiny. The story of Samsung is the story of South Korea's rise from an agricultural society to the world stage. After the second world war, South Korea was poor, even poorer than its northern sibling, and painfully undeveloped. Now, it is a global leader in technology and engineering.
However, as an outsider, Cain doesn't have the same access as a local might. The chaebol are secretive and impenetrable and Cain doesn't enjoy the same kind of insider information as Mike Isaac did for Super Pumped (the Uber expose). Nobody is texting him from clandestine board meetings or sneaking him stolen files. He manages to land a few key interviews, a Lee family relative, a retired top executive, but many of the central players are missing. As a result, Samsung Rising isn't as revealing as some of the other business books featured on this blog (notably the aforementioned Super Pumped and John Carreyrou's Bad Blood).
Cain’s timing is impeccable. Samsung’s current vice chairman, Lee Jae-yong, is on trial at this very moment. He faces charges of bribery - the full charge is too long and bizarre to repeat here, but involves olympic race horses and the South Korean president - and he seems guilty, by all accounts. The plot thickens, though. Lee hardly seems like a criminal mastermind and he definitely isn’t a John Rockefeller or a Masayoshi Son when it comes to business acumen. So the question remains: who is in control? Who is the man behind Samsung’s curtain? It’s a question that Cain leaves unanswered.