Dynastic Drama
Hotel Shilla President Lee Bu-jin, the eldest daughter of Samsung Group Chairman Lee Kun-hee, filed for divorce on October 8 against Samsung Electro-Mechanics Vice President Lim Woo-jae. The couple has been together for 15 years and has a son in the first grade. It is said that she made her decision after the chairman’s heart attack in May this year.
Lee Bu-jin entered the Samsung Welfare Foundation in 1995 as a successor to the group. She met her husband, who was a rank-and-file employee of Samsung subsidiary S-One at that time, in a volunteer activity and married him four years later, despite the disapproval of her family. After the marriage, the husband studied in the United States, worked for the U.S. headquarters of the group, and came back to Korea for rapid promotion in Samsung Electro-Mechanics.
Under the circumstances, many people are paying keen attention to whether he will be promoted again at the end of this year. Last year, he was the only member of the owner’s family who failed to be put on the promotion list. It is said that family background is one of the causes for their divorce.
Samsung Group Chairman Lee Kun-hee and his wife Hong Ra-hee, the director of the Leeum Samsung Museum of Art, have one son and three daughters. The eldest son is Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong and the other daughters are Cheil Industries President Lee Seo-hyeon and the late Lee Yoon-hyeong. Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong was married to Lim Se-ryeong, the eldest daughter of Daesang Group honorary Chairman Lim Chang-ok, in 1998, and split up with her in 2009.