With the KOSPI topping 5,000, the world is all about stocks. Standing on the line between overnight riches and overnight ruin, the ups and downs of life seem allowed only to two kinds of people. Those who have "Samsung Electronics stock" and those who don't. Those who board the train on time with tickets they bought in advance and enjoy the ride, and those who wander with empty shopping bags and no ticket. In step with signals from above, young Les Fourmis borrow to buy stocks instead of homes, while older people clutch bundles of cash and stamp their feet at securities firm counters.
We met former Samsung Electronics Chairman Kwon Oh-hyun at a time when semiconductor stocks are soaring. It was a month after he published the book "Again, super gap." The semiconductor cycle has hit a super momentum, but with the future even foggier, the name Kwon Oh-hyun carried considerable recall value. In 1985, under Chairman Lee Byung-chul, he joined the Samsung Semiconductor Research Center in the United States and made "No. 1 in memory semiconductors in the world," and in 2017 he was promoted to chairman of Samsung Electronics, delivering the best performance in history — a legendary figure.
Kwon Oh-hyun is now chairman of the Orange Planet Startup Foundation, supporting and mentoring startups. In the Samsung family Oner cycle of Lee Byung-chul, Lee Kun-hee and Lee Jae-yong, he was the only professional manager who laid the foundation for the "super gap strategy." We asked to talk to him for in-depth thoughts on the future of semiconductors and the class of leaders.
As the stalemate deepened with Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, Kwon Oh-hyun entered a conference room in a high-rise building on Teheran-ro in Gangnam. This gentleman in a pink T-shirt and skinny pants said he had never done an interview in his life.
-Why didn't you do interviews?
"I didn't see a reason to. I was saying everything through results. If we met, you'd ask personal things, and that's my privacy."
I was startled because his voice was so soft. If I didn't hyper-focus, I felt I'd miss the thread, so I had to raise my eyebrows and prick up my ears. In contrast to me, exhausted from the sheer act of listening, he was relaxed and in control.
-You've come out with "Again, super gap." It's been eight years. How have you spent your time?
"After I first wrote 'Super gap,' I wrote the sequel 'The leader's questions.' I thought it would end there, but it didn't (laughs). After I stepped down from my post, I saw that the country was struggling and Samsung Electronics was struggling. Seeing that, I became curious. 'Why do some companies get worse and some survive?' I was absorbed in finding the answer for a while, and this book is the result."
He said there would be no more 'super gap' publications.
-It feels like just yesterday that the term 'super gap' sounded strikingly fresh. Now it's become a common noun in the business world.
"People around me tell me to trademark it (laughs). Super gap was a term we often used in Samsung's internal meetings. Widening the gap wasn't enough; just having some gap wasn't enough. 'It's a different class.' 'It's a different level.' It was a strategy to create an enormous gap."
-That result likely produced the overwhelming outperformance of Samsung Electronics and SK hynix today. A super momentum has arrived in semiconductors, and individual investors in the stock market are excited. Whether this cycle can be sustained long term is what everyone cares about.
"Semiconductors will grow for the next 10 years. This time it went up abnormally a lot, though. In any case, it's a boom. Even if there's a correction, it won't swing wildly like before. Why? In the past there were many players and you didn't know who would invest, but now there aren't many players left in the market. It's a sector that requires huge spending on R&D and large-scale investment, so it's not easy to jump in."
China is a big variable, but for now, he said, Europe and Japan will find it difficult to be equal players. With Silicon Valley leading the global economy, semiconductors are an irreplaceable product.
-Your analogy of memory to archery and non-memory to clay shooting was spot on.
"Don't Koreans excel at archery? Memory semiconductors are like archery, shooting at a clear target. With precise, fine processing to minimize defects, you keep hitting 10 points. Fifty years ago and now, memory's basic functions are reading and writing. The target is clear. But many people, without really knowing, raise their voices, saying, 'We should build CPU and non-memory too,' but it's not easy. Ten or 20 years ago, how could we have known AI chips or smartphone chips (AP) would be needed?
When I first took charge of the non-memory division in 1997, total sales were about $1 billion. When I left, it was around $15 billion. Even that level of growth took a full 10 years. That's how hard it is. Everyone hopes to graduate top of the class at a prestigious university. But look at the countries that do non-memory well. The absolute powerhouse is the United States (home to Nvidia and Apple).
Non-memory aims at moving targets. Only the United States keeps redefining systems as it goes. For the past 20 years, the U.S. has been doing clay shooting at moving targets. Such businesses are difficult for Japan and Europe too."
-How will the status of foundry (contract manufacturing) unfold going forward?
"When I formed the foundry team in 2005, our technology was about three generations behind Taiwan's TSMC. Now, in terms of technology itself, we're similar. Assuming we keep executing well, TSMC and Samsung should go together. There's no need to overheat by forcing, 'We'll beat TSMC the year after next.' 'You eat some, I'll eat some.' That kind of race is good."
He said memory semiconductors ultimately require "a few models in ultra-mass production." The "nation of archers," which has raised precision through diligence, is now reaping the pursuer's fruit with HBM, but thinking about the future, he added a sharp critique that talent with a different identity is needed.
-A nation's vision and direction change depending on how it uses its talent. What do you think about the phenomenon of China steering talent to engineering, the United States to law, and Korea to medicine?
"The country that can use talent from all over the world is the United States. The homegrown elite may go into law, but geniuses from abroad flock to the U.S. to start companies. Two-thirds of Silicon Valley is immigrants, and the wealthiest people are immigrants. Elon Musk and Jensen Huang are both immigrants. China is an outlier too, but in any case the U.S. is propped up by an inclusive system that says, 'Do everything except what's not allowed.'"
He said Korea, Japan and Europe are all floundering now. "Europe wins Nobel Prizes, but for more than 20 years it hasn't created a new industry. 'What kind of talent should we cultivate?' The system answers that. Korea's education system teaches only the 'skill of not being wrong' from kindergarten pre-med tracks to late at night. How will that beat AI?"
The urgent task is to fix the college entrance system, he sighed deeply, adding that the vested interests in power aren't doing their part.
-How did you raise your children?
"Our daughter never went to cram school or had private tutoring. She said she didn't want it either, and because of that, she didn't get into a top school (laughs). I asked, 'Are you unhappy because you were educated that way by Dad?' She said she's happy. That's enough. You don't have to graduate from a top school to be happy. Then my daughter decided not to send her kids to cram school either. She said it felt right. But she's anxious too, haha. I told her not to worry.
In 10 years, with the population shrinking, even after filling all the universities in Seoul, there will still be seats left. Regional universities will be courting students. Actually, universities aren't that meaningful. I joke that I'll keep healthy and even help my grandkids start companies. That's my true feeling. This test-prep education that only swells social expense and doesn't deliver ROI, this 'skill of not being wrong,' should stop being taught."
-But Samsung is precisely a place where people well trained in the 'skill of not being wrong' gather. Isn't it a place for straight-A students only?
"But people educated as straight-A students do well at what they're told to do, and not so well at what they do on their own. It's not just about Samsung; our whole society is exactly like that now. People trained as fast followers make almost no mistakes or waste. With that strategy of reducing waste factors, Korea was able to reach the threshold of advanced-country status. But as the world changes, people are floundering and hesitating. Did Koreans suddenly get less smart? Are MZ lazy? No."
As Kwon Oh-hyun pointed out, the era we live in has already shifted from fast followers to fast switchers. It's time for a duet of diligent intelligence and massive intelligence. Diligent intelligence shortens time, and massive intelligence finds patterns in mountains of data to deliver insights we didn't know.
It's a crucial moment for clay-shooting-type talent who can predict and "optimize" even when no one knows what will pop out where, like people who fold the earth and dash using the art of teleportation.
-What kind of system can draw out the optimal timing?
"In the old copycat era, we had clear targets like 'Let's beat Sony' and 'Let's beat Intel.' Now you don't know what technology will pop out where. So preemption is everything. To preempt, the system must not block action. China and Silicon Valley both research passionately. They don't sleep and they do only that.
By contrast, us? If you legally cap working hours at 52 hours, you can't win. The 52-hour system fits blue-collar work. IP, content and semiconductors are different. You need flexibility. You can work hard for a year and take a month off."
He sharply noted that when a new era arrives, systems must be updated to match the speed of business.
-How much do you use AI?
"I'm not a hands-on operator, so I use it only for simple things. What I'm talking about is systems suited to the AI era. Even if our system isn't as good as America's, we can craft it better than Japan or Europe. Systems are relative, so even small fixes deliver results. Then even if we can't be No. 1, we can easily be No. 2. In golf, when others shoot a double bogey, I just need a bogey. There's no need to chase something overly ideal."
Whatever the question, he ultimately returned to 'systems.' In his book he describes systems as "the foundation stones of an organization" and leaders as "the pillars of an organization." The reason a once-thriving company suddenly declines or, conversely, surges is solely because of the "leader." Like Microsoft, which rebounded with CEO Satya Nadella's insight, and Intel, which slowly fell for lack of leaders who could read the shifting times.
But he said that the power to find "sustained growth" and better opportunities beyond short-term survival fundamentally lies in systems. Kwon Oh-hyun sees "the power of systems" as the reason the United States has not collapsed despite the Civil War, racial conflict and the Great Depression. As a nation that started like a startup, it created the ultimate political system to hedge against "leader volatility," and economically it raised industries with a flexible standard of "do everything except what's not allowed."
-But right now, the United States is roiling the world with Trump risk. While Silicon Valley's big tech unicorns are thriving, financialization of corporations is severe, and for 40 years social infrastructure and manufacturing have been on a path of collapse.
"That's right. Trump exploited those hardships to divide and became president. That's a fact. But because the system is good, the Supreme Court blocks him, and Trump will be replaced in two years. I'm not saying everything about the U.S. system is good, but from a corporations' and managers' standpoint, it's relatively the best.
Looking at the past 10 years, and even the last three years, only the United States has grown consistently. Ten years ago the EU's combined GDP was the same as the U.S., but now the U.S. is about double. Europe can't create new industries, while the U.S. is creating them. The U.S. is the only country that has grown continuously for 250 years.
It became the strongest power through World Wars I and II, and even if Trump risk worsens, America's status won't shake for the next 30 to 40 years. The foundation is the 'negative system,' that is, a permissive system of 'do everything except what's not allowed.'"
He said if Korea fails to make good use of the "time earned" as the U.S. checks China's technological rise, being overtaken will happen in an instant.
-Let's return to leaders. You said Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Lee Byung-chul and Chung Ju-yung were people who read signals in the noise. How do you develop that feel?
"If you shut yourself in a room and face the wall, you might become a sage, but you won't become a leader with good feel. Feel arises when you meet diverse people and stay in the flow of the world. To know the flow, you need to often meet people outside your business, people without conflicts of interest."
He said if a golfer talks only about golf all the time, what else would they know besides golf? The copycat era is over, so, like Westerners who major in history and then jump to biology, he urged people to be open in all directions. You can gauge a CEO's insight by "who they meet." He himself said that after becoming president, he didn't go to the office on weekends.
"On weekends I met artists and went to meet producers. I met everyone except reporters and politicians."
-That's surprising. Among senior executives of major groups, including Samsung, there's probably no one who doesn't go in on weekends.
"I wasn't the generalist type (laughs). I acted a bit oddly. So how did I not get fired? I often took on loss-making divisions. I got reassigned a lot. I did R&D, then memory, then I was put in charge of a loss-making division.
Luckily, I wasn't very timid. More like, 'Even if I get fired, would I starve to death?' Above all, I followed my curiosity, and it led to turnarounds. Even if I didn't work weekends and left on the dot — 'Isn't that guy always slacking off?' — people suspected me, but as long as the work went well, it was tolerated. When you're No. 1 in class, no one messes with you (laughs).
But that wasn't because I was great; it was because I nurtured my staff well. In Christianity, it wasn't Jesus who ran everywhere; it was the disciples who did, and that's how it's continued to this day."
-But delegation is as hard as anything.
"I warned people not to come to the office to harry subordinates. 'If you want to clean the fridge and check expiration dates, go home and do it. When you come to the office, do work that matches your rank.' If you hoard knowledge and information out of anxiety, your subordinates won't grow. In the copycat era, being wrong was a sin, so people thought getting scolded by the boss was the end of the world. That won't do. Even if they fail, let them try.
Even if they make mistakes, that subordinate gains skill. In a fast-mover era, you must not compete with your subordinates. Compete with rivals and with the future."
-As a manager, what was the most meaningful decision you made, and the most meaningful failure?
"Everything I invested in for the future succeeded. With 3D NAND (a technology that dramatically increases capacity by stacking semiconductors vertically rather than sideways), Samsung had a monopoly and other companies caught up. Then we changed the game one step further. To be a true No. 1, you must find what only you can do, not just what you can do better. If you do what you do better, you'll make money, but you'll live wearily (laughs).
I also remember that during my time at Samsung Display, we scaled down the large LCD business and shifted to mobile OLED. It was profitable, but if we judged it a declining business, we shut it down. Even if it's 'making a profit,' I would scold them.
I'd ask, 'Would you have your son work here?' You must shut down businesses on the downhill and pivot to growth industries. The future matters. Not me.
In fact, aside from semiconductors, defense and shipbuilding, market conditions aren't good now. We need to keep defining our business through new attempts. Turn failures into an asset."
-Samsung also had a meaningful failure point with HBM. In Oct. 2024, right after the third-quarter preliminary results, it went so far as to write a self-critique to declare a painful failure.
"HBM was created when I was the CEO. Vice Chairman Jun Young-hyun was the division head then, and we made HBM2 and supplied 100% to Nvidia. But later, as margins fell, a financial judgment was made. That means not preparing for the future. Simply put, it's like stopping your child from studying altogether just because their test scores dipped.
In the end, HBM became a smash hit at SK hynix. If you discard something because it doesn't make money right away, you face a painful outcome like this. Looking at not only Samsung but also Korea's corporations, their potential growth rates are steadily falling now. We must take this sign seriously."
-Looking back at your path, are there points you regret? Do you think you lived a lucky life?
"Looking back, I wasn't a straight-A student. Don't think the management I practiced was representative of Samsung's management. If anything, I practiced odd management. I wasn't someone who worked physically hard. My brain ran hard, but physically I wasn't that type. From my school days, I was more 'Even if I'm wrong, I'll try' than 'What if I'm wrong?' I was the kid who would at least ask the teacher, 'Wouldn't it be better if we did it this way?'
Speaking of luck, those born from 1950 to 1965 were all a lucky generation. We lived through a period of rapid growth, so we were truly lucky. Among them, I was even luckier. I graduated college in 1975, did a master's at KAIST, and first learned the discipline of semiconductors. In Korea there was no such thing as a semiconductor industry.
It was serendipitous that I went to study at Stanford University in Silicon Valley. When Chairman Lee Byung-chul launched semiconductors in 1983, there was no one in Korea with semiconductor experience, so he called me as soon as I graduated. If that's not heaven's luck, what is? Without that timing, could I have been put to such great use? If Samsung hadn't started semiconductors then, I would have grown old as a professor in the United States."
He said that while baby boomers like him are a beneficiary generation, he can't sleep when he sees young people wandering without a compass. He wrote the book out of frustration for the next generation, which has halted marriage and childbirth because it has no expectations for the future.
-Lastly, what kind of leader do we need? From which manager did you learn the most?
"A leader who thinks about the future. Really, just that one thing. Chairman Lee Kun-hee never once gave me an order. I never heard him say, 'What's the sales figure?' If a leader only asks about sales, that organization will never develop. Chairman Lee Kun-hee relentlessly asked only questions like, 'What future is coming? What should we prepare? How will we nurture talent?'
When asked those questions, I couldn't say, 'I don't know,' so I rigorously researched my own logic. Where should I be, what target should I aim for — there's no fixed answer. Leaders must open the way so we can keep trying and defining systems.
On a practical note, leaders should quickly pass the ball that comes to them. I replied to texts and emails the moment I saw them. If you sit on the ball, all that's left is burnout. Even Messi and Ronaldo possess the ball for less than a minute across an entire match. Hold it too long, and you get attacked and injured more. Do the fixer's job at decisive moments."
Kwon Oh-hyun said the secret of the super gap lies in human nature. The nature to explore and challenge limits is the very secret of the super gap. He urged bold delegation and questioning, noting that, for him, moments of making decisions without interference while leading loss-making divisions built up into "decisiveness." I found myself nodding for a long time at the thought that people gather like magnets where meaning and interest, fun and reward exist.