Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong recently told Samsung executives, "This is no time to be complacent just because the numbers have improved a bit," adding it is "the last chance to regain competitiveness," according to reports.
According to the business community on the 25th, the Samsung group shared Lee's message with executives at a seminar. Since last week, Samsung has been conducting "values training to restore Samsungness" for more than 2,000 executives at the vice president level and below across all affiliates, including Samsung Electronics. The training reportedly included a video featuring the management philosophy of the late former Chairman Lee Kun-hee.
This year's video referenced former Chairman Lee Kun-hee's "sandwich crisis" theory and included the message: "Korea still cannot escape its sandwich status. What has changed is that the competitive landscape has shifted and the situation has become more serious." Earlier, in Jan. 2007, at a chairmen's meeting of the Federation of Korean Industries, Lee said, "With China catching up and Japan ahead, the Korean economy is in a sandwich position."
In business circles, there is a view that Chairman Lee invoked the phrase to stress that Samsung now faces a business environment in which strategic choices and expense burdens have grown simultaneously between China and the United States. Despite assessments that Samsung's competitiveness has recovered as its results improved last year, the interpretation is that this assumes global market uncertainty and crisis have yet to be resolved.
Samsung Electronics struggled from 2023 through the first half of 2025 due to weakness in its semiconductor business, but in preliminary results released on the 8th of this month, it fired a signal flare of revival by posting fourth-quarter revenue of 93 trillion won and operating profit of 20 trillion won last year.
Lee's repeated emphasis on restoring technological competitiveness is interpreted as a call not to settle for the current rebound but to pursue more fundamental change. The phrase "last chance" also appears to underscore to executives that they should not become complacent because of this rebound and that a tougher overhaul is needed.
To break through this situation, Lee cited as key tasks: ▲ AI-centered management ▲ securing top talent ▲ innovation in corporate culture.
At the seminar, outside experts, including professors, also delivered lectures on topics such as organizational management and leadership. Executives attending the seminar were presented with crystal plaques engraved with their names and the phrase "From crisis to a new leap." Last year's crystal plaques were engraved with the message, "People of Samsung who are strong in crisis, skilled at comebacks, and relentless in competition."
The seminar, overseen by the Samsung Human Resources Development Institute, is being conducted sequentially with goals that include reinforcing executives' awareness of their roles and responsibilities and strengthening organizational management roles. Samsung resumed executive seminars for all affiliates last year for the first time in nine years since 2016, and from 2009 to 2016 it held special seminars for executives annually.