Third, and most critically, . The Lee family has faced repeated legal crises: Lee Kun-hee was convicted of tax evasion twice (and pardoned twice); his son, Jay Y. Lee, was imprisoned for bribery and perjury. The Chaebol ’s Achilles’ heel is the transition from a charismatic founder to a less powerful heir. Daeseul serves as a praetorian guard for the next generation. By the time Jay Y. Lee assumed de facto control after his father’s death in 2020, the Daeseul network had already been installed in every key division—finance, legal, R&D, and global strategy—ready to execute his directives without question. In this sense, Daeseul is the institutional armor that protects dynastic succession from the harsh realities of shareholder democracy.
End of Draft