Samsung Began by Selling Dried Fish and Noodles

In 1938, during Japanese rule in Korea, Lee Byung-chul moved from his family’s home county of Uiryeong to the city of Daegu and opened a trading company. He was 28. He called it Samsung Sanghoe. Samsung means “three stars,” and the founder later explained that “three” stood for something big, numerous and powerful.

The company was not big. It had forty employees in Su-dong, now Ingyo-dong, and its starting capital was 30,000 won, according to Asia Economy. It dealt in dried fish, locally grown groceries and noodles, and it exported goods to Manchuria and Beijing.

From groceries to sugar and wool

The trading business did well. In 1947 Lee moved the head office to Seoul. Then the Korean War broke out and forced him out of the capital. He started again in Busan with a sugar refinery, Cheil Jedang. In 1954 he founded Cheil Mojik, a textile company, and built its first plant in Daegu.

These were plain businesses: food, sugar, cloth. They gave the group the cash and the experience of running factories. Fifteen years later Lee used both to move into something new.

1969: Learning electronics from Japan

Samsung Electronics was founded on January 13, 1969. Samsung’s own history says the name was decided by a vote, with “Samsung” and “Electronics” winning the most votes.

The company had no electronics expertise, so it bought it. In 1969 it recruited 137 trainees, and in 1970 it sent them to Japan’s Sanyo and NEC to learn how components and tubes were made. When they came back, they became the company’s technical staff.

In November 1970 Samsung produced its first product: a 12-inch black-and-white vacuum tube TV. Within two months it was exporting black-and-white sets to Panama.

1983: The decision in Tokyo

Samsung had owned a chip business since the 1970s, but it relied on assembly work, had no technology of its own and barely survived. In early 1983 Lee was staying at the Hotel Okura in Tokyo. On February 8 he decided that Samsung would enter the semiconductor business properly. The announcement became known in Korea as the Tokyo Declaration.

He was 72. The plan met strong public opposition, Asia Economy reports. Samsung chose DRAM, a memory chip that could be made in high volume. It started developing a 64K DRAM, the leading product at the time, in May 1983 and had developed Korea’s first one by December 1.

The factory came quickly too. Giheung Plant 1 was completed on May 17, 1984, a little over a year after the decision.

Lee Byung-chul died in November 1987, before the bet paid off. His son Lee Kun-hee took over. In 1992 Samsung took the largest share of the world DRAM market, and it has held that position since, according to Herald Corporation. In 1993, in Frankfurt, Lee Kun-hee told his executives to “change everything except your wife and children,” pushing the company toward quality over quantity.

₩333.6 trillion

The memory bet now carries the company. In 2025 Samsung Electronics reported revenue of 333.6 trillion won, the highest in its history, and operating profit of 43.6 trillion won. Its fourth quarter alone brought in 93.8 trillion won, also a record, driven by memory chips for artificial intelligence. It spent a record 37.7 trillion won on research and development during the year.

What the record shows

• Plain businesses paid for bold ones. Groceries, sugar and wool came first. TVs and chips came after.
• Skills can be bought before they are invented. Samsung’s first electronics engineers learned their trade at Sanyo and NEC.
• The biggest bet came late. Lee committed Samsung to memory chips at 72, less than five years before he died.
• Volume can be a strategy. DRAM is a mass-produced chip, and Samsung has led the world market for it since 1992.

Other giants in this archive started far from what made them famous. Nintendo made playing cards, and Corning sat on a glass formula for decades before smartphones needed it.