Good morning, Quartz readers!
In a landmark conviction, Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong was sentenced to five years in prison for giving donations to entities owned by a personal friend of South Korea’s former president, which earned Lee approval for a merger.
Never before has someone of Lee’s stature—the most important man at Korea’s most important company—served time behind bars. But this is also nothing new. Lee’s father, Lee Kun-hee, was sentenced to prison for tax evasion (though he never actually went). And many members of Korea’s chaebol elite have received prison sentences, only to be pardoned and maintain their power.
Lee’s conviction also arrives about a year after Samsung’s exploding-battery Galaxy Note 7 fiasco, and days after the company unveiled that phone’s successor—the Galaxy Note 8—to accolades from gadget-watchers.
Throughout all this, Samsung Electronics—the crown jewel of the larger Samsung empire—has been running a tear on the Korea Exchange. Its components division, which makes OLED displays and semiconductors, has kept operating profit strong. The company’s market capitalization has increased by $85 billion, up almost 44% from one year ago. It seems that in the eyes of shareholders, the turmoil surrounding Samsung Electronics remains secondary to its solid fundamentals.
Maybe we can learn a little something from Samsung’s cool-headed investors, who stare down “unprecedented” crises and don’t fear a sinking ship. The Western world, far from Korea, is starting to panic. But look closely, and what appears unprecedented—a surge in populism, clashes in multicultural societies, teetering economies, new omnipotent business giants—are all storms we have weathered before. They are different, but the same, too. And the fundamentals—democratic institutions and processes—while imperfect, remain intact for now.
The future will always be unknown and scary, but it may not be any more chaotic than the present, or the past. Sometimes the best option is to have faith and hold on. —Josh Horwitz
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Nigeria quantifies its corruption. Yomi Kazeem looked at the country’s first-ever large-scale household survey on corruption, which found that Nigerians pay an average of six bribes per year, or one every two months. While most of the country’s anti-corruption campaigns have focused on government fraud and embezzlement, the survey shows that institutionalized bribery runs deep.
A Mexican city’s guide to surviving globalization. Most Americans know Monterrey as the recent destination point for outsourced US jobs, but globalization came early to this northern city early—1800’s early. Monterrey’s economy is still benefitting from that head start, but Ana Campoy (a Monterrey native) looks at how the good fortune has not been well managed or evenly spread.
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The longest war gets longer. After Donald Trump reemphasized the US commitment to Afghanistan this week, the New York Times examined (paywall) the 16-year conflict through the lens of its photographers. Their photo essay illustrates the hills and valleys of a military commitment with no end in sight.
Buying your way to the bestseller list. When debut novelist Lani Sarem’s Handbook for Mortals became the top-selling young adult book in America, the publishing community raised a collective eyebrow. Over a series of posts, Pajiba’s Kayleigh Donaldson digs into the novel’s dubious success, and discovers the shady tricks publishers can use to fake great sales.
Humans are more resourceful than we think. Since the 1800s, philosophers and doomsayers have feared that overpopulation would cripple the human race. They’ve all been wrong. Adam Kucharski writes in Nautilus about how humans have reshaped the Earth to accommodate our growing societies.
Where American terrorists are made. Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah went to Charleston, South Carolina to write about Dylann Roof’s victims, but was surprised to find herself telling his story instead. In an evocative essay for GQ, Ghansah examines Roof’s environment and the people who surrounded him. “It is possible that Dylann Roof is not an outlier at all,” she writes, “but rather emblematic of an approaching storm.”
Launching ideas > launching missiles. US admiral James Stavridis is a global security expert, the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, and a passionate reader. In an interview with Marcia DeSanctis for The Millions, he talk about the transformative power of storytelling and why a four-star admiral weeps for Julia Child.
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