A veritable prince of the realm in Korea and supremely well connected among the global elite, Lee, who has a net worth of around $8 billion, nevertheless is not widely known outside his native land. At home, Lee’s life as a single dad and the next-generation leader of Samsung makes him a boldface name. Even in Korea, however, it isn’t well understood exactly what he does. That’s partly because he has long been overshadowed by his larger-than-life father, Lee Kun-hee, chairman of the Samsung Group. ... The younger Lee’s profile is about to grow dramatically. In recent months he has made himself more visible, implicitly acknowledging that he is now the leader of the Lee clan and its business interests. The elder Lee, age 73 and Samsung’s chief for nearly 30 years, suffered a heart attack 14 months ago. He has been hospitalized ever since—at the same Samsung-owned facility where the MERS crisis began—and his condition is believed to be so grave that he cannot communicate and isn’t expected to recover. In other words, the man who built Samsung into a global powerhouse in everything from semiconductors to TVs to mobile phones has all but left the scene. And he has been succeeded—in actions, if not yet in title—by his relatively untested only son. ... A sense of healthy paranoia pervades Samsung that an insular mentality and a reliance on commodity products won’t serve it as well in the future as they have in the past. Samsung executives frequently reference the downfall of once-powerful Japanese electronics rivals such as Sony and Sharp.