Samsung Electronics has announced the death of its chairman Lee Kun-hee. The company says his son died next to him on October 25, along with a family including Vice-Chairman Lee Ja-yonggang. He was 78 years old.
The cause of death was not given, but Lee was incapacitated for several years after suffering a heart attack in 2014, which may have led him to withdraw from public life. Lee J-y ongang, called Jay Y. Also known as Lee, his father’s demise was widely regarded as a de facto leader in recent years.
Lee Kun-hee was a controversial figure who played a major role in pushing Samsung into the world’s most powerful tech bra brand from a company that makes cheap TVs and devices. He became the richest man in South Korea, with the Samsung group contributing around one-fifth of the country’s GDP. In a statement, Samsung said that Lee’s “new management” announced in 1993 was the driving force behind the company’s vision of delivering the best technology to help move the global community forward.
Lee also found himself in legal trouble. President Roh Tai-woo was convicted of bribery by the Slash Fund in 1995 and tax evasion and embezzlement in 2008, but each was formally pardoned. The second amnesty came in 2009 and was made so that Lee could regain his place on the International Olympic Committee and create a better situation in Pyongyang for the 2018 Olympics, “said the then South Korean justice minister.
Lee’s passing will reignite the inevitable speculation about the succession process. While Lee Ja-yonggang has long sought to become president, his father’s incompetence has its own legal problems, with former South Korean President Park Geun-hye spending nearly a year in prison for his role in a corruption case. South Korean law also means that anyone who assumes Lee’s assets will have to pay billions of dollars in inheritance taxes, which could force him to reduce his stake in the company.
