Lee Kun-hee, the chairman of South Korea’s largest conglomerate, Samsung Group, has died aged 78.
Mr Lee helped to grow his father’s small trading business into an economic powerhouse, diversifying into areas like insurance and shipping.
Lee Kun-hee pushed the company relentlessly up the technological ladder. By the early 1990s, Samsung had surpassed Japanese and American rivals to become a pacesetter in memory chips.
It came to dominate flat-panel displays as screens lost their bulk. And it conquered the middle-to-high end of the mobile market as cell phones became powerhouse computing devices in the 2000s.
Samsung Electronics today is a cornerstone of South Korea’s economy and one of the world’s top corporate spenders on research and development.
Mr. Lee — who was chairman of Samsung Group from 1987 to 1998, chairman and chief executive of Samsung Electronics from 1998 to 2008, then Samsung Electronics chairman from 2010 until his death — was South Korea’s richest man.
