A man dubbed the “crown prince of Samsung” by anti-corruption protesters has been given a presidential pardon in South Korea over his convictions for bribery and embezzlement. Lee Jae-yong, who was jailed twice for bribing a former South Korean president, is being shown clemency by his nation’s government in the belief that the country’s biggest company needs him back to help post-pandemic economic recovery. Lee was found to have paid $8 million in bribes to former President Park Geun-hye, with millions of South Koreans taking to the streets in candlelit protests in 2017 to demand justice. A year later, Lee was jailed for a string of offenses including embezzling company cash to buy a $800,000 horse for the president’s friend’s daughter. “It is a setback,” Sangin Park, an economics and industrial policy professor at Seoul National University, told the BBC about Lee’s pardon. “And it means Korea retreats to the time before the candlelit demonstrations.”
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