⁍ Lee Kun-hee was driven by a constant sense of crisis, which he instilled in his leadership teams to drive change and fight complacency.

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⁍ Samsung Electronics developed from a second-tier TV maker to the world’s biggest technology firm by revenue.

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⁍ In 2013, Forbes named Lee as the second most powerful South Korean, ranked only behind United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

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– South Korean President Park Geun-hye and other dignitaries are paying tribute to Lee Kun-hee, the “hermit king” of Samsung who has died at the age of 78, the AP reports. South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reports that Lee, the only son of Samsung founder Lee Byung-chull, died Sunday at a hospital in Suwon, south of Seoul, following a heart attack. Lee helped build Samsung into the world’s biggest tech company by revenue, but he also came under fire for corruption, including allegations that he embezzled millions from the company and helped his children buy Samsung shares on the cheap. Lee had been hospitalized for a heart attack in 2014 and stepped down as chairman of Samsung Group in 2015 after being convicted of tax evasion and embezzlement. His son, Jay Y. Lee, is currently the vice chairman of Samsung Electronics and is expected to be named the company’s new chairman when Lee’s funeral is held. Lee was born in 1942 to a noodle-trading family in South Korea. He went on to study economics at George Washington University in the US and then business management at Tokyo’s Waseda University before returning to Korea at age 11 to learn how Japan was rebuilding after World War II. Samsung Electronics developed from a second-tier TV maker to the world’s biggest technology firm by revenue—seeing off Japanese brands Sony, Sharp Corp, and Panasonic Corp in chips, TVs, and displays—ending Nokia Oyj’s handset supremacy and beating Apple Inc in smartphones. Lee personally recalled around $50 million worth of poor-quality mobile phones and fax machines and fax machines in the mid-1990s, setting fire to them, Reuters reports. “I needed to tighten them up and remind managers of the need to have the sense of crisis,” he wrote in a 1997 essay.