Lee Jae-yong Attends Lee Byung-chul Memorial Ceremony, Presents New Samsung Vision

On the morning of the 19th, the 33rd anniversary memorial service for Ho-Am Lee Byung-chul, the founding chairman of Samsung Group, was held. The convoy of vehicles carrying Lee Jae-yong, Vice Chairman of Samsung Electronics, and his party entered the family burial ground near the Ho-Am Art Museum in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province.
[Photo by Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Changhwan Lee, Yongin=Reporter Gimin Lee] Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong attended the memorial service for Ho-am Lee Byung-chul, the founder of Samsung Group, and presented the vision of the New Samsung to the heads of affiliates.

On the morning of the 19th, at the ancestral grave near the Ho-am Art Museum in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, Vice Chairman Lee, along with former Leeum Museum Director Hong Ra-hee, Hotel Shilla President Lee Boo-jin, Samsung Welfare Foundation Chairperson Lee Seo-hyun, and other owner family members, as well as key affiliate heads including Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Kim Ki-nam and Presidents Kim Hyun-suk and Ko Dong-jin, attended the memorial service.

The owner family, including Vice Chairman Lee, arrived at the ancestral grave around 11 a.m. and immediately held the memorial service. Afterwards, around 11:30 a.m., Vice Chairman Lee held a luncheon with the heads of affiliates at the Samsung Human Resources Development Center.

At the memorial service held three weeks after the passing of Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee on the 25th of last month, Vice Chairman Lee reportedly presented to the Samsung affiliate heads the values Samsung should prioritize and the management direction to pursue in the future.

Vice Chairman Lee, who had no public external activities for a while following his father's passing, visited the Samsung Electronics Seoul R&D Campus on the 12th, chaired a design strategy meeting, and said, "Let's put our soul into design," urging, "Let's achieve a design revolution once again," marking the resumption of his full-scale management activities.

Vice Chairman Lee attended the memorial service on behalf of his father after Chairman Lee Kun-hee collapsed in 2014 but was absent in 2017 due to imprisonment related to the political scandal case. In 2018, he visited the ancestral grave a week before the memorial service due to overseas business trips, and last year, he attended the memorial service again after three years.

At last year's memorial service, Vice Chairman Lee dined with the heads of Samsung Group affiliates and said, "Let us honor the late chairman's ideology of business serving the nation and contribute to our society and country," adding, "Let us break existing frameworks and limits, gather wisdom, and overcome the current crisis so that it becomes an opportunity for the future."

With the passing of his father, Chairman Lee Kun-hee, Samsung has entered the full-fledged Lee Jae-yong era and is facing internal and external difficulties. Samsung is currently confronted with judicial risks such as the retrial of the political scandal case and management succession related to the Samsung C&T-Cheil Industries merger. Legal circles expect that the verdict for the political scandal trial could be delivered as early as this year.

Due to the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), there is significant domestic and international management uncertainty, and there are numerous internal and external variables to address, including changes in the trade environment triggered by the US-China conflict and inheritance issues.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.