Seoul court orders SK Group's Chey Tae-won to pay ex-wife $644m in record divorce settlement

The ruling

The Seoul High Court on Friday ordered Chey Tae-won, chairman of SK Group and its semiconductor arm SK Hynix, to pay 944 billion won ($644 million) to his former wife Roh Soh-yeong. The decision caps a decade-long legal battle that South Korean media have dubbed the "divorce of the century". The award is well below the 1.38 trillion won initially ordered in 2024, a ruling that was later overturned by the Supreme Court. In its judgment, the court said it had factored in the sharp rise in SK's share price during the proceedings and Chey's managerial contributions to that increase.

SK's share price has risen sharply during the court proceedings... we can't say that Chairman Chey's managerial contributions played no role in the increase. We took the sharp rise in SK's share price into account when determining the settlement in order to ensure a fair distribution of the couple's marital assets.

The payment amounts to roughly 12% of Chey's estimated $5.6 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Chey's lawyer said the legal team would decide whether to appeal after reviewing the ruling, while Roh's representatives declined to comment.

A marriage and its fallout

Chey and Roh were married for 34 years before the relationship unravelled publicly in 2015, when Chey published a three-page letter revealing an extramarital affair and a child with another woman. He filed for divorce in 2017. Roh is the daughter of Roh Tae-woo, South Korea's first democratically elected president, who held office from 1988 to 1993. During the initial trial, her lawyers successfully argued that Chey had received 30 billion won from the former president's slush fund in 1991, money that helped build his business empire. The 2024 court accepted that argument and ordered the 1.38 trillion won payout, but the Supreme Court overturned it last year, ruling that the slush funds were illegally obtained and could not be considered part of the couple's marital assets.

Chairman Chey Tae-won is deeply sorry in that the divorce proceedings so far have caused concern to many people. We will share specific response to the verdict after we closely review the ruling.

The AI boom and SK Hynix's rise

The case has drawn intense public scrutiny as Chey's fortune swelled alongside the artificial intelligence boom. SK Hynix, the world's second-largest memory chipmaker, has become Nvidia's leading supplier of high-bandwidth memory chips for AI processors. Its valuation has soared about 2,500% since Chey filed for divorce, and shares jumped more than sixfold in the past year alone. In May, the company surpassed $1 trillion in market capitalisation on the South Korean stock market. It made its Nasdaq debut this month, with Chey ringing the opening bell. He has frequently appeared alongside Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, including at a fried chicken restaurant in Seoul last month. President Lee Jae Myung recently called Chey and Samsung chairman JY Lee "Heroes of Korean People" during the unveiling of an AI investment plan.

What's next

The ruling is not yet final, and Chey's legal team has indicated a possible appeal. The case has gripped South Korea, where SK Group is the second-largest chaebol after Samsung, with interests spanning telecoms, energy, and semiconductors. The group began as a textile company in 1953 and now touches the daily lives of most South Koreans through SK Telecom and SK petrol stations. The settlement, while reduced from the earlier figure, remains the largest divorce payout in the country's history.