After Samsung Reports Accident, Painful Details of Suicide Emerge By AL BAKER Matthew Sweeney, in New York, and Choe Sang-Hun, in Seoul, contributed reporting for this article November 26, 2005 THE NEW YORK TIMES
The news from the Samsung Group seemed to be a straightforward jolt of sadness for the head of the powerful South Korean company that has been enveloped in controversy this year.
Lee Yoon-hyung, 26, the youngest daughter of the company's chairman and one of the richest men in South Korea, had died in a car crash somewhere in the New York City area last weekend.
Korean newspapers, in both New York and Seoul, reported it that way. New York University, where the woman was a graduate student, received the same account from reporters and from Samsung's public relations representative in New York.
In the English-language edition of The Korea Herald, a Samsung official was quoted as saying that the company would not provide many details and also sought "to avoid unnecessary rumors that may circulate" about the daughter of its high-profile chairman, Lee Kun-hee.
The newspaper did note that the "death adds to a series of woes that has plagued Korea's largest business group and its owners this year," including being ordered to pay a huge fine in the United States over a price-fixing scheme.
But much about the death seemed unsupported.
The New York police had no record of a fatal motor vehicle accident involving Ms. Lee. No one could say exactly where the accident happened or when. An editor at a local Korean newspaper, The Korea Times, mobilized three reporters to investigate.
This week, a report from the city medical examiner's office and accounts from the police settled the matter: Ms. Lee had committed suicide. She had been found by her boyfriend, Soobin Shin, and his friend about 3 a.m. last Saturday, hanging by an electrical cord attached to the door of her Manhattan apartment. Yesterday, Junseok Yim, a Samsung spokesman in Seoul, confirmed that the death had been a suicide, calling it a "a family tragedy."
Mr. Yim, in a telephone interview, said that there was an initial mix-up over the facts. He said that early on, Samsung officials believed that Ms. Lee had died in a car accident and answered reporters' inquiries to that effect. In South Korea, the company did not issue any official statement on her death.
Mr. Yim said that once Samsung officials learned that Ms. Lee had taken her own life, they did not seek to correct what had been reported for two reasons: they did not want to dishonor her memory, and they believed her death to be a personal affair and did not want to intrude on a suffering family.
"It was not an attempt to mislead," said Mr. Yim, who stressed that Ms. Lee was not a part of Samsung's business operations. "I understand that story broke, containing some wrong information, but there was no attempt whatsoever to cover up anything or mislead. It is a tragedy for the family."
He said her father is in the United States undergoing tests to determine whether he has cancer and was not available for comment.
Mr. Lee and Samsung, the world's largest maker of computer memory chips, are facing an array of troubles.
As part of an agreement with the United States Justice Department, the company recently pleaded guilty and agreed to pay a $300 million fine for participating in a global conspiracy to fix prices of certain memory chips. A recent court ruling in Seoul found that Samsung had erred in its handling of financial transactions involving the chairman's children, but Mr. Yim said the decision was being appealed. Mr. Lee has a son and two other daughters.
The details of Ms. Lee's death have only added to those woes. One fundamental question that remained unanswered yesterday was why a seemingly successful young woman would take her life, although a Korean news service reported yesterday that she had been depressed recently. It was unclear if she had left a suicide note.
One of the wealthiest women in her native country, Ms. Lee was outgoing and once had her own Web site offering Koreans a glimpse into her life as a child of privilege. It became so popular, she had to shut it down. And at least one Web site about her was created by her admirers.
Ms. Lee lived on Astor Place in the East Village. She was a first-year graduate student at the Steinhardt School of Education at New York University, enrolled in an arts management program, said Josh E. Taylor, a school spokesman, who said he fielded calls from several reporters over the last few days here and overseas, saying they had heard reports that Ms. Lee was either dead or in a coma from a car accident.
According to articles in Korean newspapers, Ms. Lee had only been in New York a short time after attending Ewha Woman's University in Seoul. She enjoyed French literature and, like her father, raced cars, those articles said.
She held $191 million in Samsung shares as of 2003, according to Medias Equitables, a South Korean Web site that analyzes shareholders' information.
The story of her death began to unfold this week. A report from Agence France-Presse from Seoul on Tuesday quoted an unnamed Samsung spokesman saying she died following a car accident. But each new detail provided by news media only raised more questions: One article indicated that Ms. Lee's funeral was held immediately in a Manhattan hospital. Another report said the crash happened in New York City; yet another said it had occurred in the suburbs.
Officials said she was pronounced dead at Cabrini Medical Center in Manhattan shortly after her body was discovered.
Her body was sent to Frank E. Campbell funeral home, on Madison Avenue at East 81st Street, which often handles final arrangements for wealthy New Yorkers.
Yongil Shin, one of The Korea Times reporters assigned to the story, said he was not surprised when he found out, on Wednesday night, that Ms. Lee died of suicide. "I sort of thought that since there was no record of the accident," he said. "I knew that it had to be something else."
Mr. Shin said he and his colleagues had a hard time believing Samsung's initial story. "One of the reasons why we were so diligent in going after this story is that right from the outset, it just did not sound right and also for the respect for the dead," Mr. Shin said. "The truth about the death itself; how she died; you owe it to the person, really, to have the correct story out."
Though suicide carries a stigma of shame in the Korean culture for the affected families, a Web site about her created before her death was flooded yesterday with condolences from her fans, who also shared news reports of her death.
On Astor Place last evening, a doorman where Ms. Lee lived said she seemed to stay in her apartment for as long as a week at a time without leaving.
"She was somebody," said the doorman, referring to the fact that she had a driver who was on call and was often stationed outside the building.
