Korean farmers wearing traditional costumes stood side by side with
businessmen and government officials in trim, Western-style business suits.
All had gathered for the dedication of the Korea Fertilizer Co.’s new urea
plant, which, with an annual capacity of 330,000 tons of fertilizer, will be
one of the world’s largest.”
But during construction, chemicals brought into the country for use in
making fertilizer were sold to a saccharin-processing firm at a $40,000
profit.
It caused a huge scandal, as corruption was seen as undermining the
country’s efforts at economic development.
“Eat this saccharin!” an opposition lawmaker shouted as he threw a can
of human excrement on the parliament floor, halting the day’s proceedings.
Lee Chang-hee, B.C.’s second son and a manager at Samsung, was
responsible for the sale of the chemicals. He was sentenced to five years in
prison for corruption. B.C. was forced to step down and surrendered 51
percent of his fertilizer plant to the government in an attempt to get
leniency for his son.
Following Korean tradition, he appointed his oldest son, Lee Maeng-
hee, to head Samsung in his place.
But that son, Henry Cho told me, was a “troublemaker.”
He was rumored to be violent and dissolute, unfit to lead the company.
Maeng-hee later admitted to a South Korean journalist that he made the
revered court whisperer Hong come into his office and kneel on the floor
before him, a huge loss of face. B.C., unhappy with his son’s erratic
management style, returned to Samsung and eventually told him to resign.
When Chang-hee was released from prison, he had hoped for a warm
welcome from his father.
“But his father refused to let him take over the company. He was a very
good entrepreneur,” Henry told me, “but according to my grandfather [B.C.
Lee], he was [too] much into details and small in scale [in his thinking].”
So Chang-hee sent an anonymous tip to President Park Chung-hee
detailing the real estate and other assets that his father was holding,
prompting a grand schism between father and son. In the wake of that
schism, the second son faded into obscurity and died of leukemia in 1991.