Lee Kun-hee: Passing of a corporate titan

With the passing of Lee Kun-hee, a vital chapter of the transformation of the Samsung Group into one of the world’s powerhouses of technology and innovation comes to an end.

The chapter did not begin in 1987 when he succeeded his father as chairman, but in 1993, when he convened a meeting of his senior-most executives in Frankfurt to announce a quality revolution at the company — no more shoddy stuff that sold at a grudging pace and required constant servicing afterwards.

In 1995, he made his staff watch a bonfire of 150,000 pieces of the company’s electronic equipment, mostly mobile phones, that did not meet his expectation of quality.