to do.” Samsung still didn’t have an iconic product, nor had it completed its
generational succession.
“It was just a show,” Yong-chul told me bitterly. “An interesting piece
of theater....It was like watching a fire at a rich person’s house,” he
explained. “The public doesn’t want the fire to spread to their houses. They
still want their kids to get a job in Samsung.”
Nine others were implicated in the charges: vice chairman and financier
Lee Hak-soo, the second-most-powerful man at Samsung, another top
executive, Kim In-ju, and seven more executives.
—
ON JUNE 13, 2008, Chairman Lee and his aides entered the courthouse in
Seoul. The grim silence was punctuated by the flashes of cameras. The
chairman, walking very slowly and obviously in ill health, spoke in a frail,
weak voice.
“I apologize for causing concern,” the chairman said in his opening
statement to the court. “Everything was my fault, and I take full
responsibility. Those who stand trial with me are people for whom I was
responsible. I sincerely ask for leniency on their behalf.”
Two months later a Seoul district court found Chairman Lee guilty of
tax evasion but cleared him of Samsung’s decision to sell stocks to his son
at unfairly low prices. “I am sorry,” he told reporters as he left the
courthouse.
He had been stripped of his imperial aura, shamed, and disgraced. He
was sentenced to three years in prison, but the judge commuted his
sentence, sparing him prison time.
—
YET WITHIN SAMSUNG, BIG changes were already taking place. A
generation of key figures had left the company. Eric Kim’s contract ended
in 2004; K.T. Lee left in 2007 and CEO Yun Jong-yong in 2007.
Despite the chairman’s guilty verdict, Kim Yong-chul, the
whistleblower, felt little sense of triumph. Old friends and colleagues
stopped calling him. Once Mr. Popularity for his Samsung connections and
for the celebrity cases he had tried as a prosecutor, he was now persona non