"Samsung Shock" is a mirror of Korean capitalism and an unfinished drama of empire.

In this era of intersecting crisis and opportunity, Samsung's future is a question that illuminates the future of the Korean economy.

Samsung Electronics is the heart of the Korean economy.


The fate of the nation, from exports and tax revenues to the assets of individual investors, is intertwined with Samsung.
But for the past few years, Samsung has been in the midst of a crisis.
In semiconductor foundries, it was pushed by TSMC, in HBM, it was caught behind SK Hynix, and the MZ generation got their hands on the iPhone.
The term 'Samsung Shock' sounded like a harbinger of downfall.
But after 2024, the same word takes on a completely different connotation.
Samsung's 22 trillion won foundry contract with Tesla, Apple's shift to image sensor supply, discussions of cooperation with Qualcomm, and the establishment of large-scale investment bases in the US and Japan demonstrate Samsung's tenacious narrative of turning crises into counterattacks.
"Samsung Shock" is a drama that records that transition.

--- From the prologue

The foundation of the Samsung empire has always been built on two pillars.
One was semiconductors, known as the rice of industry, and the other was the Galaxy smartphone in the hands of people around the world.
When these two axes rotate simultaneously, Samsung becomes a gigantic empire that no one can surpass.
Semiconductors have secured massive profits and global technological leadership, while smartphones have proven brand power and a presence in the consumer market.
However, the two pillars of the empire began to show signs of cracking over time.
It was a crack created by the combination of external competitive pressure and internal structural fatigue.

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The packaging war wasn't just a battle of technology.
It was a fight of alliances.
Samsung had to work with American companies while also joining hands with the Japanese ecosystem.
Fabless companies like Nvidia, AMD, and Intel wanted their chips to be securely tied to Samsung's production lines, and the U.S. government sought to ensure supply chain stability in the process.
Samsung is preparing to go head-to-head with TSMC by building a packaging line with a foundry in Taylor, USA, with subsidies.
As the Tesla deal shows, customers don't just want a single chip.
They wanted a full set, including packaging, and any company that couldn't meet that demand would be eliminated from the market.

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The packaging war was thus fateful in Samsung's imperial narrative.
Building on the scars left by Japan's past regulations, Samsung has made the heart of Japan its research hub.
The counterattack, which had begun from the fortress built in the enemy's camp, was now continuing in the final battlefield called Packaging.
The fight for the throne was no longer about fair numbers, but rather about how perfectly one could bundle chips.
On that battlefield, Samsung was preparing not the language of the loser, but the language of the winner.

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Samsung's strength remained its scale.
From Pyeongtaek and Hwaseong to Taylor in the US, Samsung was the only company with the world's largest semiconductor production capacity. Investors still pinned their hopes on Samsung, believing that when demand for HBM4 exploded, it was ultimately the company capable of stably meeting supply.
If Hynix was ahead in technology, Samsung could respond with quantity and a global production network.

But the inconvenient truth hasn't gone away. Hynix's victory in the HBM3 generation wasn't a fluke, but a structural shift.
It was a victory achieved through a customer-centric, agile strategy, the courage to take risks, and the foresight to read the AI ​​boom.
Samsung had to learn this lesson.
The super gap is not maintained by technological superiority alone.
Trust, speed, and bold decisions must come together with customers.

*
Samsung has packaged this technology not as a simple feature, but as a philosophy that opens up the future of smartphones.
In a hyper-connected society, security is a matter of survival, and latency-free connectivity is the new standard.
With server-based AI suffering from structural weaknesses like personal information leaks and slow speeds, Galaxy24's on-device AI seemed like the answer the times demanded.

However, the market reaction was not as explosive as expected.
The rebound created by Galaxy 24 was certainly there, but it was limited.
While reviewers praised the Galaxy 24's features, they also noted that the iPhone still holds the cultural sway.
While the technological innovations were noteworthy, they were not enough for the younger generation to choose the Galaxy as an icon to project their own lifestyle.
The cultural symbolism of the iPhone's camera remains strong on Instagram and TikTok.
Everyone agreed that the Galaxy 24's AI capabilities were amazing, but that didn't immediately lead to a "must-buy-a-Galaxy" mandate.

*
What was interesting about Lee Jae-yong's message was that it differed subtly from Samsung's past philosophy.
Lee Kun-hee's era was an era of quality innovation and new management.
The declaration, “Change everything except your wife and children,” was a slogan to shake up the organization, change the system, and leap forward as a global company.
However, Lee Jae-yong's "hyper-gap" and "hyper-connectivity" were not the language of organizational innovation, but rather a declaration encompassing a global ecosystem and technological philosophy.
The ambition was to reorganize the external order beyond internal change.

Of course, there are criticisms as well.
The term "hyper-connectivity" may sound like a technological showpiece, and hyper-connectivity risks leading to privacy violations and a controlled society.
But Samsung wrapped this in the word trust.
The logic was that while an unsecured connection is insecure, a connection protected by a security system like Knox can be transformed into trust.
Samsung's new philosophy was to view the era of hyperconnectivity not as a threat but as an opportunity.

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What Samsung emphasized internally was not ‘differentiation in technology’ but ‘differentiation in experience.’
We believed that the moment consumers experience the Galaxy experience in their daily lives, rather than reading spec sheets, differentiates the brand.
So, when developing a single feature, Samsung asked, “What new story will this create for users?”
The folding motion of the foldable, the writing feel of the S Pen, the immediate response of the on-device AI, and the sensory results of the camera.
All of these were examples of differentiation implemented through the language of experience, not technology.

Galaxy's differentiation has now become a philosophy beyond survival.
Originality, not pursuit, new grammar, not imitation.
Samsung's future depends on how consistently it pushes this philosophy and establishes it as a narrative of new experiences in users' daily lives.
Consumers remember what is possible because it's a Galaxy, rather than the specs that list features.

The smartphone war is still fierce, but the answer to differentiation lies not in numbers or price, but in the uniqueness of the experience.
Galaxy's unique differentiation is a narrative woven together by Samsung's people and technology, a language of survival that will determine the brand's fate.

*
Lee Jae-yong said of this strategy, “Eco-friendly technology is the new power.”
The technology to use energy without waste and the system to maximize efficiency meant that it could go beyond simply reducing costs and shift the balance of power in the global order.
The European Union is already pushing for the introduction of a carbon border tax, imposing prices and taxes based on carbon emissions throughout the entire life cycle of products and services.
In this trend, only companies that had energy efficiency as their weapon could survive.
Samsung's air conditioning business was not simply a new business, but a new weapon that would complete Samsung's ESG narrative on the global stage.

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The most painful moments in Samsung's history were not the moments of brilliant success, but the moments of missed opportunities due to hesitation.
On a stage where a bet could have turned the tables, hesitation, internal logic, and excessive caution always exacted a price.
And the price was not simply loss, but the transfer of control of the global technological order into the hands of others.

The choice of smartphone operating system was a representative example.
Until the mid-2000s, Samsung was trying to develop its own operating system, Bada.
It was an attempt to read the advent of the smartphone era and create a crack in the duopoly of Android and iOS.
But the strategy was not completed.
Internally, we lacked the power to push Bada OS forward and failed to attract a global developer ecosystem.
At one point, Samsung had the world's largest smartphone market share, but it was a moment when it missed the opportunity to build its own ecosystem.
If Samsung had invested more boldly, the mobile world map might have looked completely different today.

*
Korea's ordeal was Samsung's ordeal.
And Samsung's crisis was Korea's crisis.
As globalization closed in, the fatigue and tension Samsung felt soon transformed into a burden that all of Korean society had to bear.
Samsung is still racing toward a super gap, but now its path is unfolding not just on the battlefield of chips, but on the giant chessboard of world order.

*
Lee Jae-yong makes a lonely decision on that stage.
While carrying on the heavy legacy of the super gap, we must engage with the global game in a different way than in the past.
Each of his business trips was not just a simple schedule; it was a strategic plan for Samsung's future and a destiny chart for the Korean economy.
And now, his footsteps are once again heading towards America.
The shadow of the chairman who designs an empire by running on foot crosses the center of the world.

*
Samsung's rise and fall wasn't simply a test of one company's performance; it was a litmus test for Korean capitalism as a whole. Even as Samsung faced concerns about its downfall, falling behind TSMC and Hynix, the spark of a rebound remained alive in technology and alliances.
Great companies have the power to rise again even when they fall.
And now, the 'Samsung Shock' has transformed from a symbol of crisis to an icon of revival, standing as an ironic mirror of Korean capitalism.

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What is clear is that Samsung's story is far from over.
The Empire still stands on the stage, and the whole world is watching the next scene.
The Samsung name is now more than just a company; it is a mirror of Korean capitalism, a testing ground for global capital, and a battlefield for future industries.

Between downfall and resurrection, the unfinished drama raises only one question:
What face will the empire reappear with in the next scene? And that face will be a giant screen that reflects not just Samsung's, but the fate of all Korean society.

--- From the text