South Korea

"So far, China hasn’t felt the economic pressure to abandon low-end manufacturing (clothing, footwear, and so on), in part because there are still a lot of poor Chinese provinces like Guizhou that have cheap labor. That trend might not hold given escalating tariffs. But if Xi is successful, it means that other developing countries (in Asia, Africa, and around the world) will be unable to climb the industrial ladder that China reigns over. Developed countries have reason to be alarmed as well. Since China is so large, it has the financial firepower to target any industry it wants for technological leadership. Small countries have had to pick their battles, as Denmark did in the wind industry and South Korea did with memory chips. China wants to have it all."

"Cook, often asked how he feels about all this, has suggested Apple is some kind of change agent. “Your choice is, do you participate? Or do you stand on the sideline and yell at how things should be?” Cook said in 2017. “My own view—very strongly—is you show up and you participate. You get in the arena. Because nothing ever changes from the sideline.” But White says Cook isn’t participating so much as being used—like when he accepted, in October 2019, a role as chairman of the advisory board at the Beijing-based Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management. “The role that they want Tim Cook to play is Useful Puppet, one that they can use for propaganda purposes,” she says. In her view, Samsung operates at a considerable business disadvantage because South Korea is a democracy with NGOs, trade unions, and a vibrant press that, for instance, has interviewed grieving parents after some workers developed leukemia from working in factories. “Apple doesn’t have any of that possible pressure,” White says. “Apple actually has a government that prevents all of those key stakeholders in society from writing an article or appearing on television. They can’t even protest.”"

"LG was desperate to win the order because the Korean economy had been rocked by the Asian financial crisis, in which currency turmoil in Southeast Asia spread to the rest of the continent and brought South Korea to the brink of default. The Korean currency lost roughly half its value amid the upheaval, with numerous banks facing insolvency because of their high exposure to dollar-denominated debts. One Apple engineer recalls that inside the LG factory was a large banner the workers walked past multiple times per day. It was two feet tall, twelve feet wide, and had just one word in big letters: SURVIVE."

"Mitsunori advised Masa to enter politics and become president of South Korea."

"We now have five, all from the same mother, Shannon, who I found twenty-five years ago abandoned on a country road while I was biking in Ireland. She was just nine months old and followed me around for a day until I picked up and took her back to the U.S., where she lived until she was sixteen on our farm in Connecticut. When she started to decline, I couldn’t imagine not having her in our lives. I’d heard about the successful cloning of dogs in South Korea and decided to try. The results have been extraordinary. The pups, born from Shannon’s DNA, do not have her exact coloring or sequence of spots, but I see in each of them the essence of Shannon’s spirit and soul. And yes, I know it is controversial and an indication of how outrageously advantaged our lives are. I hold no illusions about that."

"Knoetze first attended a congress on small business in Berlin, where he built up valuable contacts from Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea. After visiting each of these countries as well as Singapore and Tokyo in Japan, he returned with a wealth of information about the flourishing small businesses of the Far East."

"Rupert saw the country’s future as lying not in mass production, but in production by the masses – as had happened in South Korea and was also the case in Italy."

"f one is to explain John Fredriksen's success, one of the keys is the incredible ability the man has to shake off defeats and push on relentlessly. He himself believes he lost a billion kroner during the "liquidation sale" associated with the custody detainment in 1986. He slowly worked his way up again in Cyprus, only to face another debacle with the feverish contracting of tankers from South Korea in the early 90s. Another 1.5 billion kroner lost, according to the man himself. Few can lose a billion here and a billion there. For Fredriksen, it had become a habit, and the gambler Fredriksen wasn't easily intimidated. In the summer of 1996, he was more willing to take risks than ever before."