, Columnist
Time to Take Down Korea's Stumbling Giants
Samsung's recent woes underscore why Korea's President Park needs to take down the smothering chaebol.
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If you think the folks at Samsung are having a rough week, just wait until Park Geun Hye gets to work on them.
Profits at Samsung Electronics Co. plunged almost 20 percent in the second-quarter, a deeply worrying sign of vulnerability for South Korea's most dominant company. As recently as a year ago, the talk was of Samsung, Apple killer. Now, the company is being squeezed from above by Apple Inc.'s high-end iPhones, and from below by cheap upstarts like China's Xiaomi Corp. Worse, there's a dearth of sensational new products in the pipeline.