"Lee Jae-yong and Chey Tae-won are printing money"...As Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix soar, "Get on board now" meme spreads

[The Financial News] As Samsung Electronics briefly surpassed a market capitalization of 1 trillion dollars during trading and the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) broke through the 6,300 level, AI-generated memes featuring chaebol heads such as Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong are once again spreading across online communities.

In the image that has been shared, Lee stands in front of a rocket labeled "HDM4," reaching out his hand and saying, "No time to explain, just get on." The wording on the rocket appears to be a mistaken label for sixth-generation high bandwidth memory (HBM4). 
This meme is a follow-up to the so-called "rescue team" meme, which depicted Lee riding in a luxury sports car against a battlefield backdrop. That earlier meme first appeared when the Samsung Electronics share price began to surge, and similar images featuring SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won and Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Eui-sun soon followed, drawing wide attention.
Another meme, dubbed the "chairman banknote meme," which seamlessly composites the faces of chaebol leaders onto high-denomination bills, is also spreading rapidly. In these fictional 200,000-won and 1 million-won banknote images, the faces of Lee and Chey are superimposed, symbolically commemorating the historic share price milestones of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.
Behind the spread of these memes is the historic rally in the stock market that took place that day.
The KOSPI closed at 6,307.27, up 3.67% from the previous day. Samsung Electronics jumped 7.13%, SK Hynix climbed 7.96%, and Hyundai Motor Company rose 6.47%, with mega-cap stocks with large index weights leading the gains. The KOSDAQ also finished 1.97% higher at 1,188.
During the session, Samsung Electronics broke through a market capitalization of 1 trillion dollars, moving up two notches in the global rankings from 14th to 12th. According to market-cap tracking site CompaniesMarketCap, it is the first Korean company to do so and, among Asian firms, the second after TSMC.
The so-called "trillion-dollar club" is regarded in the U.S. stock market as a symbol of ultra-large corporations. Some in the market are even saying, "Now the global top 10 is within reach." Tesla currently holds 10th place worldwide by market capitalization.
Lee’s combined stock holdings also swelled by more than 1.8 trillion won in a single day, reaching 40.5802 trillion won. The value of his Samsung Electronics shares (97,414,196 shares) was estimated at 21.2362 trillion won based on the closing price.
Samsung C&T also closed at 360,000 won, pushing the value of Lee’s holdings in the company up to 12.8479 trillion won. It is reportedly the first time in the history of the domestic stock market that an individual shareholder has held more than 20 trillion won in a single stock.
Netizens reacting to the memes commented, "Should I still get on board now?", "The meme is record-breaking, and so is the share price," and "If all the chaebol heads are already in the meme, isn’t it too late by now?"



sms@fnnews.com Seong Min-seo Reporter