Re Lee Kun-hee, his passing is a good opportunity to understand that S Korea's economic miracle was a two-stage rocket: from 1960s to 1990s, then 1990s to 2010s. The first stage, "Miracle of the Han River", gets all the attention, but the second stage is not any less miraculous.

Dragging yourself out of the ashes of the Korean War to a middle-income status was quite an achievement, but arguably the second stage was an even rarer feat: going from middle-income to a top-10 advanced economy in about 30 years. Never before seen in human history.

Check out this Nick Kristof article from 1986, one year before Lee Kun-hee took over the Samsung Group. Today, countries like Syria and Angola have ~$2,200 per capita GDP. What if I told you Angola will have the world's greatest flying car makers in 2050? https://twitter.com/AskAKorean/status/1320383093371510785

I very much remember from my own childhood in the 1980s that Samsung was not *that* great of a company, especially compared to Hyundai which was the undisputed leader at the time. Hyundai was the Stage 1 Korean company; Samsung is the Stage 2 Korean company.

Story of Samsung under Lee Kun-hee is worth reading then, because it is the story of Korea's second economic miracle. It was not as rough-and-tumble as Hyundai's story with Chung Ju-yeong, who raised shipyards and steel mills from dirt. But it is not any less exciting a story.

It's a story of a man who took over a cheap microwave oven manufacturer, but had the vision to foretell where the future was going, and whipped everyone working in his company until his company was the world leader in producing memory chips and smartphone.

It's also a story of a man who navigated Korea of the 1990s, freshly transitioned out of military dictatorship and trying to have democratic norms take root. This world gave Lee Kun-hee a lot of freedom, including freedom to exploit his workers and oppress labor unions.

Which naturally leads to the question: does the Korea, Inc. rocket ship have Stage 3 in it? South Korean economy is already bigger than any Western European country except Germany, UK, France and Italy. What would Stage 3 look like, if it exists?