Yes. My college roommate (from Korea) once told me that Samsung is "above the government", when I asked him whether Samsung influences the government.
But naturally they must have enemies within the system. And as a country modernizes, it becomes harder and harder to maintain that tight control. So perhaps the enemies are striking as hard as they can to dethrone Samsung. One consideration is whether the enemies are also Cheabols though.
The relationship among different Chaebol families is less like different Mafia factions, and more like different Wall Street bankers. They may compete in the market, but they're all in the same boat, and they have a vested shared interest in keeping themselves largely out of the law's reach.
Moreover, virtually all of them are connected to each other (and to most powerful politicians) via marriages. In a sense, they are one big (corrupt and powerful) family.
> The relationship among different Chaebol families is less like different Mafia factions, and more like different Wall Street bankers. They may compete in the market, but they're all in the same boat, and they have a vested shared interest in keeping themselves largely out of the law's reach.
This isn't describing a difference -- Mafia families have the same interest. Omerta and all that.
There's a lot of external influence on the Korean government. A significant amount of Samsung shares are foreign held. The larger foreign investors are concerned about the structure of these Korean giants based on familial ties and want Samsung to break apart ownership.
The Koreans are a weaker country heavily reliant on the presence of the US' external peace keeping force to deter aggression from their neighbors. There's a significant amount of pressure even by US firms for Samsung to abandon their primitive tribal familial structures within their corporations.
With the tight knit control over the full conglomerate Samsung gained to acquire the pinnacle of success on these corrupt deeds done which seem to be drastic to even those who are working, since time changes and people also change. This is a huge blow to SK and Samsung no matter how we dissect it.
They should get their control back and try to explore better paths to success with the same zeal else the catastrophic foreign pressure (who I also think is the reason behind this) might cause Implosion in the SK-Samsung or chaebols. Japan has this Enterprise Keidanren for damage control over this recent Toshiba's scandal causing a spiral downfall.
Also most countries split opinions based off the younger vs old generations cause tiny fractures which in some cases lead to devastating losses..
But naturally they must have enemies within the system. And as a country modernizes, it becomes harder and harder to maintain that tight control. So perhaps the enemies are striking as hard as they can to dethrone Samsung. One consideration is whether the enemies are also Cheabols though.