6 ms·

Samsung chief staves off arrest, prosecutor keeps chasing

90 points by richardboegli 10y ago

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
JumpCrisscross 10y ago
Does anyone know if there is a family or commercial connection between the judge who dismissed Lee's arrest warrant and the Lee family? It's terrible that my mind goes there first, but such is the state of Park's Korea.
- jjangsangy 10y ago
  Samsung among many large Korean companies like Hyundai are have large family ties known as Chaebols https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol
  - dmix 10y ago
    Being Chaebol doesn't stop them from getting arrested fortunately: http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesasia/2014/04/30/obsessed-with-control-some-korean-tycoons-end-up-in-handcuffs/#5cb4abb34d83 http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesasia/2014/04/30/obsessed-w... https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/business/international/south-korea-lotte-chaebol-conglomerate-indicted.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/business/international/so...
    - simonh 10y ago
      They get arrested and even convicted, but then almost immediately pardoned. Only in very few cases do the convictions and sentences actually stand. Mostly they just go back to business.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- MikusR 10y ago
  Does anyone know if there is a family or commercial connection between the prosecutor who asks for Lee's arrest warrant and the competitors to Lee family? It's terrible that my mind goes there first, but such is the state of Park's Korea.
  - hotgoldminer 10y ago
    Why is this reply so similar to the one above? How long have the bots been on HN?
    - Jach 10y ago
      If you pay attention to the differences you see it as a satirical remark on the sloppy thinking, not a bot. A long tradition on HN.
  - yongjik 10y ago
    All of Lee's competitors are inheritors of similarly structured "chaebol" companies. If you think they have any interest in making the public opinion more accepting of chaebol's family members going to prison for breaking laws, you haven't been paying attention. I have to wonder exactly what you think is "the state of Park's Korea," or if you just thought copying that phrase was funny.
- aerialcombat 10y ago
  The judge is known to have received scholarship from Samsung in the old days.
- hrehhf 10y ago
  To be honest, it is more likely that the prosecutor is the one who has ulterior motives, such as trying to get revenge on behalf of one of the prosecutor's friends/family. Or even just for personal career advancement.
  - JumpCrisscross 10y ago
    > it is more likely that the prosecutor is the one who has ulterior motives I could see equally likely, but more? Why more? We recently saw a corruption scandal, which went through to indictment, against another Korean family [1]. Park, to whom Lee has been connected, has already been impeached [2]. The preponderance of evidence I've seen favours the prosecution. [1] https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/business/international/south-korea-lotte-chaebol-conglomerate-indicted.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/business/international... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-09/korea-s-park-impeached-as-protesters-vent-anger-over-corruption https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-09/korea-s-p...
r00fus 10y ago
Looks like the saga is very likely to continue and plague Samsung and Lee. > "The only thing that has changed is that he won't be detained now," commented Park Jung-hoon, a fund manager at HDC Asset Management, adding that uncertainties were likely to linger. Does anyone see similarities between this and the Note7 debacle? It seems that reality is just not friendly to Samsung right now.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  The Note7 debacle and this political crisis are both products of Korea's corrupt chaebol structure [1] (a polite way of saying "oligarchies"). Samsung sourced its batteries, virtually exclusively, from Samsung SDI [2]. Samsung SDI is very likely controlled by Lee's family members. That implies these bids weren't competitive. The upshot is less emphasis on function than family. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol [2] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-samsung-sdi-batteries-idUSKBN13I2NM http://www.reuters.com/article/us-samsung-sdi-batteries-idUS...
  - _coldfire 10y ago
    Sounds like a lot of family run businesses I know. Just vastly different in scale.
  - r00fus 10y ago
    Wasn't the (technical) issue with the Note7 that Samsung tried to fit too much battery in too small an enclosure? (ie, 10 lbs of sugar in a 5 lb bag). It'd be interesting to see how the Chaebol structure may have contributed to this... unfortunately we'll likely never know.
    - Steko 10y ago
      The technical issue was the result of a top down demand on engineers who weren't given enough time to deliver/test a safe design. I'm not sure how this can be directly attributed to the chaebol structure although the Lee heir in question was also pushing the Note 7 redesign effort.
brilliantcode 10y ago
As a Korean, I can't help but feel saddened by the omnipresence of chaebol or family run conglomerates. I was born in a hospital run by Hyundai with equipments manufactured by Hyundai. The apartment block was built by Hyundai. Every morning, a bustling crowd of dads get into a Hyundai car, driving on roads paved by Hyundai, spend the next 14+ hours in Hyundai offices, factories, shipyards. If you were not of conscription age you were attending a school built by Hyundai reading a textbook funded by Hyundai justifying the sacrifice of millions of Korean labourers, now cast aside and shunned into a life of poverty. If you were due for military service the next 2+ years would be spent working in Hyundai built facilities and Hyundai Rotem (also built the Canada Line Skytrain in Vancouver) manufactured tanks. When you are finished you would return to your post-secondary studies sponsored by Hyundai with campus built by Hyundai subsidiaries. We called it, Republic of Hyundai, 7th largest city in South Korea. If you lived in Seoul, it was Samsung Empire. When your business makes up over a quarter of South Korea's GDP, you are simply untouchable, from the law. North Korea has Kim Jong Un, South Korea has 12 of them, all happily hidden away under the veil of "capitalism" and "democracy" giving rise to the second highest suicide rate after Guyana, a small South American country with 170x smaller GDP.
- gkanai 10y ago
  > When your business makes up over a quarter of South Korea's GDP The definition of too big to fail.
  - simonh 10y ago
    That didn't help Daewoo. They were the second largest corporation in Korea, two places ahead of Samsung, at the time they collapsed with debts of $84 Bn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daewoo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daewoo
- malloryerik 10y ago
  And most students studying like industrially farmed animals to get into one of these 12 firms. I wonder if this isn't the chaebols' real secret sauce: everybody wants to work for the mega-corps, even as they hate them. Samsung gets the best students simply because it's Samsung. Parents will rail against the chaebols with their fists in the air and in the next breath insist that their children do everything to secure positions at them.

90 points by richardboegli 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Does anyone know if there is a family or commercial connection between the judge who dismissed Lee's arrest warrant and the Lee family? It's terrible that my mind goes there first, but such is the state of Park's Korea.

jjangsangy 10y ago
Samsung among many large Korean companies like Hyundai are have large family ties known as Chaebols https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol
- dmix 10y ago
  Being Chaebol doesn't stop them from getting arrested fortunately: http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesasia/2014/04/30/obsessed-with-control-some-korean-tycoons-end-up-in-handcuffs/#5cb4abb34d83 http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesasia/2014/04/30/obsessed-w... https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/business/international/south-korea-lotte-chaebol-conglomerate-indicted.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/business/international/so...
  - simonh 10y ago
    They get arrested and even convicted, but then almost immediately pardoned. Only in very few cases do the convictions and sentences actually stand. Mostly they just go back to business.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
MikusR 10y ago
Does anyone know if there is a family or commercial connection between the prosecutor who asks for Lee's arrest warrant and the competitors to Lee family? It's terrible that my mind goes there first, but such is the state of Park's Korea.
- hotgoldminer 10y ago
  Why is this reply so similar to the one above? How long have the bots been on HN?
  - Jach 10y ago
    If you pay attention to the differences you see it as a satirical remark on the sloppy thinking, not a bot. A long tradition on HN.
- yongjik 10y ago
  All of Lee's competitors are inheritors of similarly structured "chaebol" companies. If you think they have any interest in making the public opinion more accepting of chaebol's family members going to prison for breaking laws, you haven't been paying attention. I have to wonder exactly what you think is "the state of Park's Korea," or if you just thought copying that phrase was funny.
aerialcombat 10y ago
The judge is known to have received scholarship from Samsung in the old days.
hrehhf 10y ago
To be honest, it is more likely that the prosecutor is the one who has ulterior motives, such as trying to get revenge on behalf of one of the prosecutor's friends/family. Or even just for personal career advancement.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  > it is more likely that the prosecutor is the one who has ulterior motives I could see equally likely, but more? Why more? We recently saw a corruption scandal, which went through to indictment, against another Korean family [1]. Park, to whom Lee has been connected, has already been impeached [2]. The preponderance of evidence I've seen favours the prosecution. [1] https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/business/international/south-korea-lotte-chaebol-conglomerate-indicted.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/business/international... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-09/korea-s-park-impeached-as-protesters-vent-anger-over-corruption https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-09/korea-s-p...

r00fus 10y ago

Looks like the saga is very likely to continue and plague Samsung and Lee. > "The only thing that has changed is that he won't be detained now," commented Park Jung-hoon, a fund manager at HDC Asset Management, adding that uncertainties were likely to linger. Does anyone see similarities between this and the Note7 debacle? It seems that reality is just not friendly to Samsung right now.

JumpCrisscross 10y ago
The Note7 debacle and this political crisis are both products of Korea's corrupt chaebol structure [1] (a polite way of saying "oligarchies"). Samsung sourced its batteries, virtually exclusively, from Samsung SDI [2]. Samsung SDI is very likely controlled by Lee's family members. That implies these bids weren't competitive. The upshot is less emphasis on function than family. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol [2] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-samsung-sdi-batteries-idUSKBN13I2NM http://www.reuters.com/article/us-samsung-sdi-batteries-idUS...
- _coldfire 10y ago
  Sounds like a lot of family run businesses I know. Just vastly different in scale.
- r00fus 10y ago
  Wasn't the (technical) issue with the Note7 that Samsung tried to fit too much battery in too small an enclosure? (ie, 10 lbs of sugar in a 5 lb bag). It'd be interesting to see how the Chaebol structure may have contributed to this... unfortunately we'll likely never know.
  - Steko 10y ago
    The technical issue was the result of a top down demand on engineers who weren't given enough time to deliver/test a safe design. I'm not sure how this can be directly attributed to the chaebol structure although the Lee heir in question was also pushing the Note 7 redesign effort.

brilliantcode 10y ago

As a Korean, I can't help but feel saddened by the omnipresence of chaebol or family run conglomerates. I was born in a hospital run by Hyundai with equipments manufactured by Hyundai. The apartment block was built by Hyundai. Every morning, a bustling crowd of dads get into a Hyundai car, driving on roads paved by Hyundai, spend the next 14+ hours in Hyundai offices, factories, shipyards. If you were not of conscription age you were attending a school built by Hyundai reading a textbook funded by Hyundai justifying the sacrifice of millions of Korean labourers, now cast aside and shunned into a life of poverty. If you were due for military service the next 2+ years would be spent working in Hyundai built facilities and Hyundai Rotem (also built the Canada Line Skytrain in Vancouver) manufactured tanks. When you are finished you would return to your post-secondary studies sponsored by Hyundai with campus built by Hyundai subsidiaries. We called it, Republic of Hyundai, 7th largest city in South Korea. If you lived in Seoul, it was Samsung Empire. When your business makes up over a quarter of South Korea's GDP, you are simply untouchable, from the law. North Korea has Kim Jong Un, South Korea has 12 of them, all happily hidden away under the veil of "capitalism" and "democracy" giving rise to the second highest suicide rate after Guyana, a small South American country with 170x smaller GDP.

gkanai 10y ago
> When your business makes up over a quarter of South Korea's GDP The definition of too big to fail.
- simonh 10y ago
  That didn't help Daewoo. They were the second largest corporation in Korea, two places ahead of Samsung, at the time they collapsed with debts of $84 Bn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daewoo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daewoo
malloryerik 10y ago
And most students studying like industrially farmed animals to get into one of these 12 firms. I wonder if this isn't the chaebols' real secret sauce: everybody wants to work for the mega-corps, even as they hate them. Samsung gets the best students simply because it's Samsung. Parents will rail against the chaebols with their fists in the air and in the next breath insist that their children do everything to secure positions at them.