By Kim Yoo-chul
Staff Reporter
Samsung Group’s powerful Strategic Planning Office will fade out after 50 years of glorious and disgraceful history in accordance with a reform package announced by Chairman Lee Kun-hee Tuesday.
``The strategic planning team will be closed and I will resign as head of the office,’’ Lee Hak-soo, the chairman’s key confidant and vice chairman, said in a nationally televised press conference at the group headquarters in central Seoul.
The group’s control tower was created as the office of secretaries in 1959 during the reign of late group founder Lee Byung-chul. The unit was expanded into the Corporate Restructuring Office in the late 1990s when a currency crisis, which swept South Korea, threatened the outlook of the nation’s biggest conglomerate.
The office acquired its current name in March 2006 after the group downsized into three small teams, from the previous one bureau and five teams, as a follow-up measure to a scandal in which the group had been allegedly embroiled in secret wiretapping and slush fund creation.
According to group officials, the strategic planning office, having strategic support, human resources and public relations, had been operating with 99 staff members under the control of Lee Hak-soo. Kim In-joo, the virtual No. 3 after Lee, leads strategic support, according to officials. Kim also offered to resign with Lee in a massive reshuffle package plan.
``The Strategic Planning Office is deeply involved in investment and managerial plans among the group’s affiliates, including Samsung Electronics, while being tasked to manage the wealth of the Lee family,’’ a group official told The Korea Times.
He added worries of a ``control vacuum’’ if the group disappears.
The office’s secret structure has been under fire amid allegations that it played a crucial role in managing slush funds and helping the founding family transfer wealth illegally.
``The office laid a solid foundation for setting up Samsung’s future strategies and played a decisive role in lifting the group into a global entity. However, Samsung understands controversy over the role of the unit,’’ Vice Chairman Lee said.
``I think each affiliate is now armed with its own capability to do business independently.’’