Lee Kun-hee (, ; 9 January 194225 October 2020) was a South Korean business magnate who served as the chairman of Samsung Group from 1987 to 2008, and again from 2010 until his death in 2020. He is also credited with the transformation of Samsung to one of the world's largest business entities that engages in semiconductors, smartphones, electronics, shipbuilding, construction, and other businesses. Since Lee Kun-hee became the chairman of Samsung, the company became the world's largest manufacturer of smartphones, memory chips, and appliances. He was the third son of Samsung founder Lee Byung-chul. With an estimated net worth of US$21 billion at the time of his death, he was the richest person in South Korea, a position that he had held since 2007. He was convicted twice, once in 1996 and subsequently in 2008, for corruption and tax evasion charges, but was pardoned on both instances. In 2014, Lee was named the world's 35th most powerful person and the most powerful Korean by Forbes's list of the world's most powerful people along with his son, Lee Jae-yong. Early life Lee Kun-hee was born on 9 January 1942 in Daegu, during the Japanese occupation of Korea. He was the third son of Lee Byung-chul, the founder of the Samsung group, which was set up as an exporter of fruit and dried fish. He went on to get a degree in economics from Waseda University, a private university in Japan. He studied for a masters program in business from the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., but did not get a degree. Career First period at Samsung Lee joined the Samsung Group in 1966 with the Tongyang Broadcasting Company, and later went on to work for Samsung's construction and trading company. He took over the chairmanship of the conglomerate on 24 December 1987, two weeks after the death of his father, Lee Byung-chul. In 1993, believing that Samsung Group was overly focused on producing large quantities of low-quality goods and was not prepared to compete in quality, Lee famously said, "Change everything except your wife and kids". This call was an attempt to drive innovation at the company and to face up to the competition at that time from rivals like Sony Corporation. In a declaration now known as the 'Frankfurt Declaration', he had his executives gather in the German city in 1993 and called for a change in the