Samsung Electronics has officially appointed third-generation heir Lee Jae-yong as executive chairman, two months after he secured a pardon of his conviction for bribing a former president in a corruption scandal that toppled a previous South Korean government.
Lee’s promotion is partially symbolic as he has helmed the Samsung group in his capacity as the electronics company’s vice chairman since 2014, when his late father, former chairman Lee Kun-hee, suffered a heart attack. Lee’s legal troubles had been widely seen as a factor that prevented Samsung Electronics from quickly promoting him as chairman after the death of his father in 2020.
