Samsung Verdict Sends a Tough New Message to South Korea Inc.
Mr. Lee and other family members could still wield power behind the scenes, say people who study South Korea’s
biggest companies, the way some of the country’s other business empires have been run from jail cells.
It was the most remarkable sentence yet for a South Korean business titan, and a sign
that the country is no longer willing to offer its business leaders political impunity in exchange for untrammeled economic growth.
“He can fire any chief executive, and the professional managers should have to keep reporting to him.”
Mr. Lee and four other Samsung executives were convicted on Friday of paying $7.8 million in bribes and other inducements to ensure
that the country’s disgraced former president, Park Geun-hye, supported a complicated corporate deal.
Like many other chaebols, Samsung was an early beneficiary of a deal struck between South Korea’s autocratic rulers
and business leaders after the Korean War to work together to make the country a fast-growing, export-driven economic powerhouse.
Now South Korea and Samsung — the country’s biggest business empire and a global force in the technology industry — are at a turning point.
The chairman of SK Group, another family-run South Korean business empire, was convicted in 2013 for misappropriating company funds.
Lee Jae-yong, the third-generation heir to the Samsung empire, was sentenced to five years in prison over a bribery scandal
that has already contributed to the downfall of the country’s former president and shaken the country’s political and economic foundations.