Let’s hope there are more of these to keep us interested while stuck at home. Instructions for joining this free Zoom conference can be found on the RASKB website. And while you’re there, join as a member if you haven’t already. Geoffrey Cain will be talking about his book Samsung Rising which was published last month, available from Amazon and elsewhere.
Geoffrey Cain: Samsung Rising
Tuesday 7 April 2020, 19:30 Seoul Time
Joining instructions can be foud on the RASKB website
SAMSUNG RISING is a sweeping insider account of the Korean company’s role in the emergence of South Korea as a technological and economic powerhouse, and its ongoing war against the likes of Google and Apple. It’s based on years of Geoffrey’s reporting for The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and Time, including more than 400 interviews and unprecedented access to the reclusive Lee family that founded Samsung.
Forty years ago, Samsung was a rickety Korean agricultural conglomerate that produced sugar, paper, and fertilizer, located in a backward country with a third-world economy. However, with the rise of the PC revolution, Chairman Lee Byung-chul began a bold experiment: to make Samsung a major supplier of computer chips. The multimillion-dollar plan was incredibly risky but Lee, wowed by a young Steve Jobs, who sat down with the Chairman to offer his advice, became obsessed with creating a tech empire. In SAMSUNG RISING, readers follow behind the scenes as the company fought its way to the top of tech.
Today, Samsung employs over 300,000 people (compared to Apple’s 80,000 and Google’s 48,000). The company’s revenues have grown more than forty times from that of 1987 and make up more than 20 percent of South Korea’s exports.
Geoffrey Cain is a foreign correspondent and author having covered Asia and technology for The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Time, The New Republic, and other publications. A resident of South Korea for five years and a Fulbright scholar, he studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and the George Washington University. He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
