For many global corporate giants, a changing of the guard at the C-suite rarely makes front-page news. As long as products reach consumers, services run smoothly and supply chains hold steady, public attention rarely turns to who sits in the boardroom. But for Samsung, South Korea’s largest and most influential family-owned chaebol, leadership transitions are never just internal business — they are national news that can shape the trajectory of an entire economy. The decades-long drama of Samsung’s royal family succession reached its long-awaited conclusion in July 2025, when the Seoul High Court upheld an acquittal for chairman Lee Jae-yong on fraud charges tied to the 2015 merger that secured his grip on the empire, closing a 10-year legal saga that once brought down a South Korean president and upended the future of the world’s biggest tech manufacturer.