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Samsung Clan's Inheritance Squabble Turns Ugly
By wchung | 02 Jul, 2025
Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee has responded to allegations by his older brother Lee Maeng-hee and his younger sister Lee Sook-hee who both claim to have been cheated out of their share of their father’s legacy.
On Tuesday Maeng-hee had criticized his younger brother for “always being greedy” in a statement released through his lawyer.
His older brother was “kicked out of the family a long time ago,” Lee Kun-hee, the publicity-shy Samsung chairman, told reporters outside the Samsung headquarters in Seocho in southern Seoul Wednesday morning.
“You seem to think that Maeng-hee has the same status as me, but that is hugely mistaken,” Lee said. “He is the one who sued me 30 years ago and turned our father in to President Park Chung Hee to put him in jail.”
“[Maeng-hee] claims he is the first son of the family but none from our family, including me, has thought so,” said Kun-hee, the third son of the late Samsung founder Lee Byung-chull. “I have never seen him appear at the regular ancestral rites.”
Lee Kun-hee is also being sued by Lee Sook-hee, the Samsung founder’s fourth child and second daughter. She claims in her suit to have been a beloved member of the family before getting married to a member of the family that controls LG.
LG is an abbreviation for Lucky-Goldstar, the firm’s original name, which translates to “Geumsung” in Korean. Therefore, the family is popularly referred to as the “Geumsung clan”.
Samsung had begun as a firm dealing in sugar and food. After Sook-hee’s marriage to an LG heir, Samsung expanded out to include electronics, angering her in-laws. When Sook-hee complained to her brothers and sisters about the expansion, she was cut off by their father, Lee Kun-hee said.
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