Samsung was born in a colonized Korea. In 1938, Lee Byung-chul started the company in Taikyu (today’s Daegu) as a small trading firm dealing in groceries, dried fish and noodles during the period of Japanese rule.[page:30] It was not an electronics lab or a factory; it was a merchant house that learned early how to navigate supply, credit and colonial bureaucracy.

After liberation and the Korean War, Lee rode the wave of South Korea’s state‑driven industrialization, expanding Samsung into textiles, insurance, retail and, eventually, heavy industry and electronics.[page:30] By the 1960s and 1970s, Samsung had become one of the country’s dominant chaebol — family‑controlled conglomerates that linked factories, banks and trading houses under a single surname.

When founder Lee Byung-chul died in 1987, leadership passed to his son Lee Kun-hee.[page:30] Lee Kun-hee is widely credited with transforming Samsung from a sprawling, sometimes unfocused conglomerate into a global leader in electronics, semiconductors and mobile technology.[page:30] Under his watch, the company pivoted from copying to competing at the cutting edge, especially in memory chips, displays and smartphones.

The transition was not just strategic but personal. In 2012, some of Lee Kun-hee’s elder siblings took him to court, claiming parts of the inheritance he had received from their father.[page:30] The lawsuit exposed the scale of hidden assets and intra‑family tensions, but the court ultimately ruled in Lee Kun-hee’s favor, reinforcing his position as the uncontested patriarch of the Samsung empire.[page:30]

After Lee Kun-hee’s death in 2020, control of Samsung effectively passed to his only son, Lee Jae-yong (often called Jay Y. Lee).[page:30] By January 2026, Jay Y. Lee’s net worth was estimated at about 18.2 billion dollars, making him one of Asia’s richest individuals.[page:30] His mother, Hong Ra-hee, and sisters Lee Boo-jin and Lee Seo-hyun each control multi‑billion‑dollar stakes in group companies, with fortunes of roughly 8, 7.5 and 7 billion dollars respectively.[page:30]

Around the nuclear family sits a wider network of relatives, including Hong Seok-joh, Chung Yong-jin, Hong Seok-hyun, Lee Myung-hee and Lee Jay-hyun, who head or influence other major South Korean business groups.[page:30] Together, they form an extended elite cluster whose interests intersect across retail, media and industry — but Samsung remains the flagship and source of the greatest leverage.

The Lee family’s grip on Samsung does not depend on owning outright majorities in Samsung Electronics or every affiliate. Instead, their control is maintained through a complex network of cross‑shareholdings among subsidiaries and related companies.[page:30] Each company owns slices of others, forming a web where relatively small direct family stakes translate into effective control over the group.

This structure — a hallmark of chaebol governance — makes it difficult for outsiders or activist investors to challenge the family, even when public shareholders hold large fractions of individual companies.[page:30] It also means regulatory or legal attacks must navigate an entire ecosystem, not just one boardroom. For the Lees, this cross‑ownership network is the real “operating system” of Samsung power.

The scale of the family fortune became impossible to ignore after Lee Kun-hee’s death triggered South Korea’s inheritance tax system. In 2026, authorities confirmed that the family had completed payment of a 12 trillion won tax bill — about 6 billion pounds or 8 billion dollars — the largest inheritance tax collection in South Korean history.[page:30] The bill was paid in six instalments over five years by members including widow Hong Ra-hee and daughters Lee Boo-jin and Lee Seo-hyun.[page:30]

The inheritance itself was worth about 26 trillion won and included shares, property and art collections.[page:30] With a top rate of roughly 50%, South Korea has one of the world’s highest inheritance tax burdens, and the Samsung case became a national symbol of that policy in action.[page:30] For the family, paying the bill was both a financial event and a political message: they would comply with the law, keep control, and move on.

Power has an address. In 2025, reports noted that various Samsung family members lived along Seoul’s Itaewon-ro corridor, a stretch associated with high‑end residences and embassies.[page:30] The clustering reflects how South Korea’s business elites often concentrate in specific neighborhoods, where private residences, security and proximity to political and diplomatic circles intersect.

In public, the Lees present themselves as global corporate leaders; at home, they move through a relatively tight urban corridor that mirrors their tight grip on corporate Korea.[page:30] The geography of their lives — Daegu roots, Seoul base, global travel — maps neatly onto the geography of Samsung’s operations: domestic headquarters and factories tied into worldwide supply chains for phones, chips and displays.

By 2024, the Samsung family ranked 12th among Asia’s wealthiest families, buoyed by strong results at Samsung Electronics and other affiliates.[page:30] They sit at the intersection of several power systems: a historic Jeonju Yi pedigree, a modern chaebol governance model, and the global dependence on Korean semiconductors and smartphones.[page:30] When Samsung forecasts beat expectations, the Lees’ paper wealth jumps — and so does their leverage over suppliers, partners and even the Korean state.

The family’s trajectory — from a colonial‑era trading shop through postwar industrialization to 5G phones and memory fabs — makes them a template for 20th‑ and 21st‑century Asian capitalism.[page:30] They are a reminder that behind every sleek Samsung device sits a tightly organized family that has learned how to survive legal challenges, tax shocks and political scrutiny while keeping its hands on the core levers of the country’s flagship company.[page:30]