Anchor: Nearly three years after he was released on a suspended prison term on a bribery case involving jailed former President Park Geun-hye, Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong is back in prison after an appeals court reversed the previous verdict in a retrial of the high-profile case. 
The latest court ruling, based on the Supreme Court’s judgment that more money exchanged between the concerned parties should be viewed as bribes, is drawing mixed responses, including from the business community, which is concerned about its impact on an economy heavily dependent on the tech giant and its affiliates. 
Moon Gwang-lip has more. 

Report:  The Seoul High Court on Monday sentenced Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong to two and a half years in prison, convicting him of offering around eight-point-six billion won in bribes to former President Park Geun-hye and her long-time confidante Choi Soon-sil.

In return, Lee asked, albeit implicitly, for favors in his power succession from his then ailing father Lee Kun-hee, the court said. 

With the verdict, the 52-year-old leader at the helm of the nation’s largest conglomerate was immediately put behind the bar at Seoul Detention Center, where he was incarcerated for around a year in 2017 and 2018 on the same charges. 

In 2017, Lee was sentenced to five years in prison on bribery charges but was freed the following year in an appeals court ruling which reduced his sentence to two-and-a-half years suspended for four years. 

In August 2019, however, the Supreme Court overturned the ruling and remanded the case to the appeals court for further proceedings, saying that the amount of money considered bribes should be more.

The Seoul High Court followed through with the top court decision in the Monday’s ruling, recognizing around five billion won more in bribes than it had done previously.

It also dismissed the accused's request to consider leniency given Samsung's pledge to establish a compliance committee to deter possible legal violations in the future. 

It also sentenced two other senior Samsung executives, Choi Gee-sung and Chang Choong-ki, former director and deputy director of Samsung Group's now-defunct Future Strategy Office, respectively, to two-and-a-half years in prison on the same bribery charges. 

With former President Park and her confidante Choi sentenced earlier to 20 years and 18 years in prison, respectively, for their roles in the bribery case and other corruption, some legal experts considered handing a prison term to Lee unavoidable. 

However, groups representing large businesses are expressing concerns about the court ruling's impact on the economy. 

In a statement, the Federation of Korean Industries(FKI) said the verdict could have an adverse effect on the Asia's fourth largest economy as a whole.
Moon Gwang-lip, KBS World Radio News.