Chaebols, Explained

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If you finish reading this post, you would know why this took so much time. Also, I took Samsung as an example in this post.

Chaebols, whether is an international news or news in Korea, appear onto the news headlines these days. But before I can talk about all of this, what is a "Chaebol"?

You know how almost all large Korean companies are family companies? We call the families Chaebolga, (재벌가). The members of it are the chaebols. Why does Korea have so many family companies that are rich? Koreans have this "Family ideology", so it was like starting in the 1500's, one ancestry lived in a town and another prominent ancestry in another town. Some, or most Koreans love to keep their things in the family. And to avoid huge amount of taxes, many chaebols spread their wealth to their relatives, and give them high spots on their companies. Also, many wealthy people want to "keep the wealth among their families" and improve relations between chaebol families, so in order to do this, they usually have one chaebol son get married to another chaebol daughter from another company.

Wait, before you see the map below, the reason there is Samsung Electronics but also Samsung Cars is because of less tax payments, so many children to give the companies to and relatives splitting off to make another Chaebol family line. Samsung Group is a group of companies under the Lee family, but isn't really a company itself. And in Korea, the Chaebol family is usually in the Chair's family, not the CEO.

This contributes to why eleven Chaebol companies are all interconnected, based on Samsung's founder Lee Byung Chul;

Long story short Lee Byung Chul made sure that their children were married to children of other major companies and officials of governments. From this part the post is all about the family tree, so if you don't want to read it, you can close the window.

AND SERIOUSLY, DON'T COPY THIS STUFF ONTO YOUR OWN BLOG. Except for expeddi, where I got the family tree photo from.

 Lee Byung Chul had two half-Japanese children we don't care about, and 8 children that became really wealthy people. The eight children are: Male: Gunhee, Changhee, Manghee. Female: Myunghee, Dukhee, Soonie, Sookhee, and Inhee. Notice how all these people's names end with "hee": most Korean siblings have at least one letter (English equivalent are syllables) in their name that their brothers and sisters have.

Son Gunhee:

Relations with Joongang Newspaper Group: Lee's son Lee Gunhee, who got to be the Chair of Samsung Group, was married to the daughter of Joongang Newspaper Group founder, in which one of his three sons became the chair of Joongang News and the other two sons were jealous (or given from his father) and founded Bogwang Group, another Chaebol group.
Relations with Daesang Group: Gunhee's son Jaeyong, who's going to take over Samsung Group when he dies, marries the daughter of the Chair of Daesang Group. Jaeyong's wife and her sister are the largest stock holders of the largest group in Dae
Relations with Donga News Group: Gunhee's daughter marries brother of Donga Chair.

Son Manghee: Received CJ Group from Father

Son Changhee: Received Saehan Group from father

Relations with Dongbang Group:  Changhee's son Jaegwan gets married the daughter of Dongbang Group's Chair. 

Relations with Life Group (Bankrupt in 1990's): Changhee's daughter Hyejin marries the son of former Life Group Chair

Daughter Myunghee: Received Shinsaegae Group (Which made the largest department store in the World) from her father

Daughter Sukhee:

Relations with LG Group: Sukhee was married to the brother of the Chair of LG

Daughter Inhee: Received Hansol Group/ Seperated from Samsung, and had 5 children and 12 grandchildren.

Phew. This took a long time because I was really tired last night and I wrote like once sentence an hour. Sorry!

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