name “Samsung” could become permanent.
“When the family spoke, you didn’t challenge it,” dozens of executives
told me. “[Jay Y. Lee] was like a god.”
Jay’s intervention sealed the phone’s fate. Once a symbol of corporate
pride, the Galaxy Note 7 had been consumed quite literally in flames.
Little did they know that the Samsung empire itself was teetering. Four
months later, on February 16, 2017, viewers turned on their televisions to
the alarming headlines that Jay Lee, the crown prince and heir apparent,
was under arrest, accused of bribing Korea’s president with tens of
millions of dollars. He would await trial from a jail cell.
Whenever Samsung had a crisis, employees and executives sought
guidance from Jay’s father, Chairman Lee Kun-hee. They memorized his
sayings and listened to his speeches. The chairman thrived in crisis. He
inspired Samsung’s employees to imagine the future possibilities, to
embrace a fighting spirit, to overcome limitations and take on the world.
But this time the chairman was nowhere to be seen. In fact, no one had
heard from him in public for more than two years. He’d suffered a heart
attack in May 2014 and had disappeared into a hospital suite. Some feared
the worst. This time, it appeared, the chairman was not going to save
Samsung. The chairman, it was rumored, was dead.