Why Samsung, Hyundai & Mitsubishi Seem to Own Everything

How did companies like Samsung, Hyundai and Mitsubishi become so enormous that their names appear across completely different industries? Samsung is known around the world for smartphones and electronics — but the wider Samsung group has also been connected to shipbuilding, construction, insurance, batteries, IT services and global trading. Hyundai became synonymous with cars, yet its corporate history reaches into construction, heavy industry and shipbuilding. In Japan, the Mitsubishi name can be found across automobiles, banking, heavy industry, chemicals, property, energy and international trade, although the companies carrying the Mitsubishi name are not simply divisions of one giant corporation. So why did some of Asia's biggest business groups develop this way? In this episode of The Power Archive, we investigate the rise of the enormous corporate ecosystems that helped transform South Korea and Japan into industrial powers. We begin with South Korea's chaebol — the large business groups that became central to the country's rapid post-war industrialisation. We explore how companies such as Samsung, Hyundai, LG and SK expanded across industries as South Korea pursued exports, manufacturing and technological development. Then we travel to Japan to uncover a different story: the pre-war zaibatsu, their restructuring after the Second World War, the emergence of keiretsu corporate networks, and the extraordinary Japanese sogo shosha, or general trading companies, that built investments spanning commodities, infrastructure, food, energy, transportation and global finance. But becoming enormous creates another question: What happens when a corporation becomes so important that the economy itself begins depending on it? This documentary explores both sides of the corporate empire — the ability to mobilise capital, build supply chains, develop new industries and compete globally, alongside concerns surrounding economic concentration, corporate governance, debt, competition and systemic risk. We also examine the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the collapse of Daewoo, changes to South Korea's chaebol system, Japan's evolving corporate networks and why the American corporate landscape developed differently. The surprising conclusion is that these companies did not necessarily become diversified simply because executives wanted to own everything. In many cases, their enormous structures preserve the history of the economies that created them. When capital was scarce, corporations created internal capital. When suppliers were missing, they created suppliers. When countries needed exports, they built export industries. And when those systems succeeded, some corporations became something much larger than ordinary companies. They became corporate empires. 🌍 The Power Archive investigates the systems beneath the headlines — the forces connecting money, industry, governments, trade, technology, war and global power. 🔔 Subscribe to The Power Archive for documentaries explaining how the structures built yesterday continue shaping the world today.