Page 16 - january_123021.indd

JANUARY 2022 TAP TIMES -16-

The BIG Boom! (from 15)

A chaebol, according to Merriam-Webster,
is a large, family controlled industrial
conglomerate, but historically, it’s really
much more than that.

Samsung is privately held, and the top
executives have close family ties to the
chaebol’s founders.

In Korean, chaebol means “plutocracy, rich
business family, or monopoly,” and the
chaebol structure may encompass a single
large company or several groups of com-
panies,” according to Investopedia.

Chaebols apparently began as recently
as 1961, when President Park Chung Hee
took over the government from President
Syngman Rhee.

Foreign loans
The goal was to eliminate corruption in
government. Ironically, according to new-
worldencyclopedia.org, the chaebol grew
because of foreign foreign loans and spe-
cial favors.

Access to foreign technology also proved
critical to the growth of this Korean form
of business through the 1980s. Samsung
was founded by Lee Byung-chul in 1938 as
E-mail
a trading company, and has been ad-
roniscoff@gmail.com
next page
for rates

Samsung’s Pyeongtaek, Korea campus, its new technology head-
quarters (Samsung)