Three Stars Corporation

There's a good chance you have a Samsung smartphone in your possession as you read this -- even if it's an iPhone, as the guts of it were probably manufactured by Samsung. They dominate the smartphone market to such a degree that everyone else is just a lumbering also-ran. It is arguably the fastest-growing market in the world, with a product turnover rate that's the envy of the automobile industry. That puts Samsung in a position to potentially become the single largest corporate entity in human history. So just how big is the South Korean corporation? A lot bigger than you think.

Samsung's annual revenue for 2014 was $300B. That constitutes 17% of the South Korean economy -- or a bit bigger than the entire GDP of Egypt. To put that in perspective, here are some other 2014 revenue numbers for little companies you may have heard of...

Shell: $421B
ExxonMobil: $394B
Toyota: $226B
General Motors: $156B
General Electric: $148B
Honda: $109B


When you're pushing into Big Oil territory, you're BIG. Started in 1938 as a grocery store, Samsung has worked their tentacles into every industry you can imagine: electronics, finance, construction, petrochem, shipbuilding, even military hardware.

Years ago, while I was still a young and dumb jarhead, (I'm no longer young; the rest remains true), my unit was billeted at Posco Pier in Pohang for Operation Team Spirit. Note that by "billeted," I mean we threw up some GP tents on the concrete a hundred yards from the water and huddled around kerosene heaters. Marines don't rate buildings. Anyway, to this day I can remember being dumbfounded by the extent of the foundry and shipwright district at the Pier. It literally took fifteen minutes moving at 30mph to get through it all on your way into the "enclave." (That's the part of town the locals had set aside for use by Marines. They basically concentrated all the booze, whores, and cheap food into a five block radius and set up barricades around it, manned by very polite but well-armed policemen. It's actually one of the warmer welcomes you can get as a Marine.)

But I digress.

The point I wanted to make is this: that was in 1988, when the company was a mere 50 years old. I can only imagine what it has become today. Along with Daewoo, Hyundai, and other global corporations, Samsung has helped turned South Korea from an Asian backwater country into a near-superpower in less than a century. There are still farmers alive today (or were in 1988, at any rate) who remember pre-industrial Korea. I know, because I spoke to a few of them. In broken English, they would profusely thank us for saving them from the communists... and then sell us moon pies and kimchi noodles at extortionate prices. Quick students, the Koreans.

It's why I get a good chuckle every time Kim Jong Chubby threatens to attack his neighbors to the South: the North Korean "Army" would last exactly three days against the ROK Forces. I trained with the ROK Marines on several occasions, the first time at Munchuk Mountain Warfare School, where a 70 year-old warrant officer hiked my 20 year-old dick into the dirt and beat me up the face of a cliff by a margin of several minutes... free-hand.

The South Koreans may soon be a legitimate superpower, driven by the ever-burgeoning profits of mega-corporations like Samsung. It's unfortunate (but understandable) that they and the Japs hate each other with such passion, because the rise of China as an economic powerhouse and true superpower means that the Pacific Rim is rapidly becoming the front lines of the New Cold War. Fortunately, South Korea is one of the few allies that Muslim Boy squatting in my Oval Office hasn't managed to piss off... yet.

Okay, back to your smartphones.