bought an $830,000 racehorse named Vitana V for Choi Soon-sil’s
daughter, Chung Yoo-ra. She would train with her coach and her majestic
new prize in the German town of Biblis. She’d already taken home the gold
medal in the 2014 Asian Games, when Jay Lee and President Park were
first in talks about a Samsung sponsorship. But no formal deal had been
inked at the time. The young rider hoped to be on a path to greater glory
now.
Her career, however, was cut short.—
BACK IN SEOUL, JAY Lee was attempting to institute modest reforms in the
Samsung empire. The Galaxy phone line wasn’t recovering from slippery
sales, and the Samsung-versus-Apple wars had evolved into a ground war in
an increasingly tough smartphone market.
Jay Lee sold off Samsung’s corporate jets and got rid of its sluggish
chemical and weapons companies, raking in almost $6 billion that could be
put to better use in businesses like smartphones. He sold the Samsung Life
Insurance building, a symbol of the company’s history beloved by his
grandfather, founder B.C. Lee, for $496 million.
Then, on March 24, 2016, Samsung Electronics issued a potentially
groundbreaking announcement. In an auditorium filled with over six
hundred employees, senior executives signed a document promising major
changes in the way the company was run. They pledged to do away with
their authoritarian, top-down hierarchy. Going forward, they intended to
transform Samsung’s militaristic culture into that of a flatter, more agile
start-up, under the initiative “Start-up Samsung.”
Changes were afoot. The months ahead would be trying for Samsung
executives. The Samsung Summer Festival, a weekend of mass games, was
canceled. The company cut down on the number of job titles, reports, and
meetings and encouraged employees to speak up more. Excited young
managers were encouraged to act more like executives in Silicon Valley.
“People felt liberated,” a Samsung marketer in Suwon told me. “They
started immediately changing their office clothes into shorts and T-shirts
and sandals. Huge change. Freer spirit.”
To me, it sounded too good to be true. And before long, I was proven
right.