Lee Kun-hee

Samsung. Lee succeeded his father in 1987 and, in a 1993 speech in Frankfurt, told managers to change everything except their wives and children, starting a drive to make Samsung compete on quality rather than price. Samsung became the world's leading memory-chip maker and a major phone brand. He was convicted of tax evasion in 2008 and pardoned, a pattern that fuelled debate over chaebol privilege. He died in 2020.