But they had to get to where they are now somehow. It's hard to believe this exact company culture could habe achieved anything more involved than cloning overseas electrical devices like toasters and microwaves. So was the culture different in the past in some way at least? Like, at least having more technically knowledgeable people in upper management, if not more creative freedom for engineers et al?

I'd like to believe the process has to be at least a little bit similar to how agile, innovative and leading companies in the West can within a decade or two turn into stiff, burocratic slow moving behemoths that at best manage to buy any upcoming competition instead of innovating on its own.

if you have a good leader at the helm then the top down approach can be beneficial because you can cut through a lot of the BS. IMO it's like how democracies aren't really about the best leadership but being able to remove a bad apple.

i'd say that how SK was structured after the war allowed them to flourish, basically a dictator appointing diff people into diff industries and having a state-sponsored acceleration. add to that a drive to succeed and fight and you can somewhat see the building blocks of their success. how SK has progressed is a miracle story.

now that they are seeing the fruits of their labor my guess is you have the "parasites" coming up trying to jockey for position. or with chaebols (these big family dynasties that own a lot of industry in SK) they have their kids/family members who may or may not be competent taking over. essentially what made something like samsung takes a lot to sustain into the next generation.