Em a entrada da Wikipedia para Symbolic link
:
The file system permissions of a symbolic link usually have relevance only to rename or removal operations of the link itself, not to the access modes of the target file which are controlled by the target file's own permissions.
Como esse link simbólico é de propriedade do root, somente ele pode alterá-lo. Por exemplo,
# ln -s /bin/ls blah
# ls -la blah
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Fev 28 15:07 blah -> /bin/ls
$ rm blah
rm: cannot remove 'blah': Operation not permitted
$ ln -s blah /bin/true
ln: failed to create symbolic link '/bin/true': File exists