Side question, are Samsung Electronics and Samsung Appliances really like 2 different companies under a Samsung umbrella in SK or are they actually the same company with employees being able to be assigned / move from group to group? Same question for LG I suppose.
Samsung is a gigantic conglomerate of hundreds of companies. They also make cars, houses, entertainment, healthcare services, chemicals and of course, yes, shipbuilding.
In the occidental world, we only see a small portion of the iceberg.
So I’d say it’s pretty unlikely that employees are frequently assigned from group to group. Maybe it’s possible as a big career change but even that seems unlikely.
A chaebol (UK: /ˈtʃeɪbəl, ˈtʃeɪbɒl/ CHAY-bəl, CHAY-bol, US: /ˈtʃeɪboʊl, ˈdʒɛbəl/ CHAY-bohl, JEB-əl;[3] Korean: 재벌 [tɕɛbʌɭ] ⓘ, lit. 'rich family' or 'financial clique') is a large industrial South Korean conglomerate run and controlled by an individual or family. A chaebol often consists of multiple diversified affiliates, controlled by a person or group. Several dozen large South Korean family-controlled corporate groups fall under this definition. The term first appeared in English text in 1972.
The intensity and extent of market concentration became evident as 80% of the country's GDP is derived from chaebols. The largest of the group, Samsung, exports 20% of South Korea's goods and services alone. Although no longer financially supported by the government, these firms have attained economies of scale on such a massive level that it is extremely difficult for a startup or small or medium enterprise (SME) to surmount the high barriers to entry.
I was on the Samsung Bixby team as part of Samsung Electronics / Samsung Research America and we did work with the various appliance teams. I've never noticed a difference between "companies" when I was working with the teams at the Korean HQ (and some of them also visited us in the bay area as well). Not sure if the appliance teams were part of Samsung Electronics or not.
