Samsung scion follows father's path in scandal, too

The legal drama playing out in Seoul over whether Samsung scion Lee Jae-yong engaged in bribery and embezzlement has the feel of a Greek tragedy. It’s a tale of an ambitious son trying to live up to his father’s legacy — and the twist of fate that binds them together.

 

Lee is the crown prince of South Korea’s most powerful business dynasty. His family,  through a complex network of cross shareholdings, controls the Samsung Group, a vast corporate empire with more than $230 billion in revenue and tentacles that extend into financial services, hotels, biopharmaceuticals and fashion. But the coronation has been disrupted. Lee was arrested Friday as a special prosecutor is investigating him as a suspect in a sprawling political scandal.

 

The 48-year-old executive has spent a lifetime readying himself to take over Samsung from his larger-than-life father, Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee. The elder Lee, 75, is South Korea’s richest man and is credited with turning Samsung Electronics from a copycat appliance maker into a global electronics powerhouse. In 2014, he suffered a crippling heart attack and hasn’t played an active role in day-to-day management since.

 

Until recently, the younger Lee, who goes by Jay Y, looked like a sure bet to succeed his father as chairman. Since joining the group’s flagship Samsung Electronics in 1991, Lee has risen through the ranks to vice chairman. Last October, he joined the consumer electronics and smartphone maker’s nine-person board, and he has an ambitious agenda to push the company into new areas of growth such as software and biotech.

 

The drama has also dredged up memories of Chairman Lee’s own run-ins with Korean prosecutors: Over the years, the Samsung patriarch was convicted of tax evasion, bribing a former South Korean president and breach of duty over losses at Samsung affiliates.