SEOUL—Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee, who transformed a second-tier electronics parts maker into the world’s biggest manufacturer of smartphones and televisions, died Sunday after lying incapacitated in a hospital for more than half a decade. He was 78 years old.
Mr. Lee, who at the time of his death remained chairman of Samsung, had been hospitalized since May 2014 after a heart attack. He already had been in fragile health and was treated for lung cancer in the late 1990s.
During his more than three decades at the helm of Samsung, South Korea’s biggest conglomerate in which Samsung Electronics Co. is the crown jewel, Mr. Lee transformed the company into a global brand beyond South Korea where it sells everything from life insurance to roller-coaster rides. By almost every measure, he exceeded expectations, pushing the company to the global No. 1 position in televisions, smartphones and memory chips.
Mr. Lee, whose father founded Samsung, became chairman in 1987. He sought to boost Samsung’s brand through the Olympics, with the company becoming a top-tier sponsor and Mr. Lee serving as an International Olympic Committee member. In 2009, South Korea’s president pardoned Mr. Lee, imploring him to help land the 2018 Winter Olympics for the country. It worked.
It wasn’t Mr. Lee’s first presidential pardon. He was convicted twice, in 1995 for bribing President Roh Tae-woo and then in 2008 for embezzlement and tax evasion. At the time, Mr. Lee said the payments in the earlier case were customary, not bribes, and he pleaded not guilty in the latter.
Even in absentia in his final years, Mr. Lee continued to define the company, especially as the conglomerate’s attempts to pass dynastic control on to his only son, 52-year-old Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong, sparked continuing legal cases into alleged bribery and financial fraud.
Lee Kun-hee’s death will raise fresh questions about succession at Samsung. Mr. Lee is the company’s largest individual shareholder, though transferring it to his son or two surviving daughters faces challenges due to South Korea’s substantial inheritance tax—which governance experts estimate could be up to 60% for any shares passed to Lee Jae-yong.
Samsung, in a statement Sunday, didn’t say who would replace Mr. Lee. His son, who was groomed for years as the likely successor, had assumed the role of the group’s de facto leader in the years since his father’s hospitalization.
“Chairman Lee was a true visionary who transformed Samsung into the world-leading innovator and industrial powerhouse from a local business,” the company said. “His legacy will be everlasting.”
The company remains a technology giant world-wide, though Samsung Electronics is battling slowing momentum in mobile phones and is struggling to find new growth engines.
In Lee Kun-hee’s final, full year of leadership in 2013, Samsung...
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