South Korea's $500 Million Man

Like the name of Rockefeller in the U.S., that of Byung Chull Lee means wealth in South Korea. Now 66, Lee has amassed his nation's largest personal fortune--some $500 million, or enough to put him in the same league with Karim Aga Khan, Nelson Bunker Hunt and Christina Onassis. He made every penny of it himself, building such a profitable group of diverse companies that Korean businessmen say he has a "golden touch." They also view him with fear: Lee does not gladly suffer critics or competitors.

Only his habit of chain smoking suggests the fierceness within. Outwardly, "B.C." is mild-mannered and looks a bit professorial behind gold-rimmed spectacles. He clearly enjoys wealth. His home is a palatial retreat 25 miles south of Seoul, set amid 1,200 acres of landscaped gardens and lawns where peacocks strut. Lee also has a world famous collection of ancient Korean pottery and --the ultimate sign of luxury--a fine disdain for the Korean chore of entertaining visiting businessmen. His greatest pleasure, he says, comes in meeting "the challenge" of making money.

B.C. first faced that challenge in 1935. The son of a Confucian scholar, he had just left a Japanese college (Korea was then part of the Japanese empire). He started a tiny rice-cleaning plant in the sleepy southern city of Masan. Noting that all his competitors made deliveries by slow ox carts, Lee bought a truck --and soon left the competition in his dust, he recalls, "howling blue murder."

Other coups followed as B.C. moved into real estate speculation and sake brewing. In 1952, he decided that South Korea "could only prosper through trade." He set up his Samsung (Three Star) export-import company to do just that, and the firm quickly provided profits that Lee shrewdly invested in other ventures. Now Samsung is the umbrella of a 17-company conglomerate that includes Seoul's finest department store, one of its largest newspapers, a group of sugar refineries, paper factories and an electronics firm. Together they rang up sales of $731.9 million last year.

The key to Lee's success is an iron demand for efficiency. A decade ago, B.C. shocked family-conscious Koreans by abruptly firing two of his three sons who were Samsung managers. "They were not fit to hold executive positions," he explains. "The life of a man is short, but that of a corporation must never be." To keep his companies healthy, Lee keeps them lean. When he started the afternoon newspaper Joongang Ilbo (current circ. 680,000) in 1965, he built up a talented staff of 1,400. Today Joongang has expanded into radio and TV, but still employs only 1,400 people.

Lee insists that he now avoids politics, having settled earlier disputes with Strongman President Park Chung Hee. His entire interest is business. He spends months picking his top executives, then gives them a relatively free hand --though keeping a steely eye on them nonetheless. B.C. arrives at his downtown Seoul office at 9 a.m. sharp, ready to meet with his executives in exhaustive planning sessions. Twice a week he breaks the routine and plays golf. Lee returns to his palace, pottery and peacocks by 5 p.m. He usually dines alone, then plots new ways to increase his wealth. Preferring the glitter of Seoul, his wife, eight children and 20 grandchildren live apart from Korea's richest man.

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