Samsung began its life in South Korea being founded by Lee Byung-Chull in 1938, a very hard-working and ambitious man. He always approached any market he wanted to enter with the attitude that his company would quickly take him to the top of that particular field. His business began as an export company for fruits, vegetables and dried fish and had gone very well with forty workers at his trading company in Seoul until 1950, when the communists invaded the south. Despite losing a large amount of stock and money, he moved to Suwon in 1951 and in 2 short years his company increased its staff and profits by a staggering amount estimated at 2000%. Lee built his first production factory after the war in 1953, which was a sugar refinery, until now he had worked only as a merchant selling other people’s products. Now that Lee was financially secure, he opened department stores to do business and then began selling insurance policies and securities.
The 1960s and 1970s saw the rise of Samsung Electronics, which was founded in 1969 and benefited greatly from the policies of then-president Park Chung, who went out of his way to help anyone building a profitable company in South Korea. He would provide financial aid when needed and even ban foreign manufacturers from selling within his country to eliminate competition and allow Korean companies to become stronger. In another very clever move, he allowed certain companies to access Korea’s markets, but to do so they had to supply technology to Korea’s industry, which allowed Samsung Electronics to produce electronic chips and boards.
This allowed Samsung to produce their own products and they soon had a range of home appliances such as refrigerators, freezers, washing machines and air conditioners sold at home and exported to foreign markets. In the early 1970s, the company borrowed money and branched out into the burgeoning communications industry by building televisions and audio equipment and opening its own television station called the Tongyang Broadcasting Company. It was also in the 1970s that Samsung dabbled in heavy industrial projects like shipbuilding, oil refineries, and home electronics. Various branches of Samsung were created, such as Samsung Shipbuilding, Samsung Precision Company, and Samsung Heavy Industries Company.
Throughout the 1980s, Samsung continued to grow in all the markets it had already entered and continued to enter new ones, including aerospace, genetic engineering, and the nanotechnology it incorporates into its washing machines. They built large manufacturing plants in Portugal, England, and New York between 1982 and 1987 for the production of electronics and home appliances. It was in 1987, after running the company for more than fifty years, that Lee Byung-Chull left the company to his son Kun-Hee Lee, who took over as president.
Today, the company continues to grow and is a household name for home appliances and is considered one of the top five industrial giants on the planet. They are also the official sponsors of the Olympic Games from 2010 to 2016, both in the Olympics and in the Winter Olympics.
Samsung will officially sponsor the Olympic Games and the Olympic Movement for the next eight years, an agreement that covers the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010, the London Olympics in 2012, the 2014 Winter Olympics and the London Olympics. 2016.