South Koreans are no longer fazed by the sight of their chaebol leaders in deep trouble: the octopus-like corporate structures are suspiciously convoluted and sharp practice has been an accepted feature of the business scene for many years.

This is, after all, a country where the sheer physical size of the bribes paid by one industrial conglomerate to a political party in 2005 created the popular term “cash trucking”.

But even to a public hardened to this sort of thing, the precipitous fall to earth of Lee Kun Hee is shocking, first, because of who Mr Lee is and what he represents.

On paper, he is the chairman of the Samsung Group — a business leader whose complex network of cross-shareholdings have allowed him to inherit an empire with interests in nearly every nook of South Korean industry.

But Koreans know he is much more than that: Mr Lee is one of the country’s richest but most invisible men.

His refusal to give interviews and rare public appearances have created an air of mystery about him and powerfully enhanced his image as a near god-like figure.

Certainly, there are plenty who believe Mr Lee to be more influential over Korean daily life than the President.

He employs 250,000 people and his companies contribute a fifth of the country’s exports.

He is also a business leader responsible for putting Samsung on the world map — an achievement for which the vehemently nationalist South Koreans adore him.

When Mr Lee took over at Samsung 20 years ago, the Olympic Games were being held in Seoul.

The country was developing fast, but still only just emerged from the dark transition between military dictatorship and democracy.

It had still not had a civilian president for nearly 25 years, and its companies were virtually unknown.

That Samsung is now one of the world’s biggest makers of mobile phones, and that its consumer electronics products outsell those of the hated rivals in Japan, have given both Samsung and Mr Lee a status that transcends even the generous public view taken of most chaebol.

For that bulletproof status to vanish so suddenly is stunning.

The second aspect that makes the resignation so amazing is that its origins come from within the company itself.

This was no underhanded attack by foreign regulators or jealous corporate rivals in Japan, China or the United States.

It was a Samsung company lawyer whose allegations prompted the official investigation that led to the indictment of Mr Lee last week.

But perhaps most shocking of all is that the laying-low of South Korea’s most prominent industrial titan has taken place not two months into the presidency of Lee Myung Bak — a leader voted into his job on the promise of a more business-friendly administration.

To a Seoul corporate world that had fondly imagined five years of benign government and generous concessions, this was not the start that anyone had expected.

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