As Samsung Executive Awaits Verdict, Company Surges
“It’s riding on the coattails of a rebounding semiconductor industry.”
The trial of Mr. Lee, known as Jay Y. Lee in the West, wrapped up on Monday, with prosecutors
also seeking up to 10 years in prison for a group of other Samsung executives.
The elder Mr. Lee has been incapacitated since a heart attack in 2014, leaving Lee Jae-yong as Samsung Electronics’ de facto leader.
Lee Jae-yong, vice chairman and heir apparent to Samsung Group, faces charges
that he bribed South Korean government officials to solidify his family’s control of one of the world’s biggest business empires.
Prosecutors say Mr. Lee and other Samsung executives offered $38 million to Ms. Park and a confidante, Choi Soon-sil.
Samsung has also begun to cast aside the cloud that fell over it last year when its Galaxy Note 7, a high-priced smartphone meant to challenge the Apple iPhone
but which showed a proclivity to burst into flames, became one of the technology world’s most spectacular failures.
Those investments were ordered by Mr. Lee’s father, Lee Kun-hee, Samsung’s chairman,
who is widely credited with building the group into the powerhouse it is today.