I retreated to Seoul, where I met a spokesman from the office of the
new South Korean president at the Seoul Foreign Correspondents’ Club. He
thanked me, jokingly, for overthrowing the previous president and
installing his administration.
“Does Samsung have business in Cambodia? Do you think Samsung
was behind those reports?” a good friend who is a scholar of Korean history
asked me.
I laughed.
I knew that the fall of the Lee dynasty would not impact the continued
growth of the company. Samsung had lost its heir, for now. But South
Korea was still the Republic of Samsung, and South Korea would not
survive without Samsung, people everywhere confided in me. Its namesake
republic would live on.