Tech Titan Ordered to Pay Ex-Wife $644m in Divorce Settlement
A South Korean court has ordered SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won to pay his former wife, Roh Soh-yeong, 944 billion won (about $644 million) as part of their long-running divorce proceedings.
The settlement, which is yet to be finalized, is lower than the 1.38 trillion won award initially granted to Roh in 2024.
The case stems from the collapse of the couple’s 35-year marriage after Chey admitted to fathering a child with another woman, ending one of South Korea’s most prominent business and political unions.
Chey’s legal team said the SK Group chairman regretted the public attention the proceedings had attracted and would determine his next steps after reviewing the court’s latest ruling.
SK Group is one of South Korea’s largest family-controlled conglomerates, or chaebols, with interests spanning telecommunications, energy, semiconductors and other industries. Its semiconductor subsidiary, SK Hynix, has emerged as a major beneficiary of the global artificial intelligence boom, supplying advanced memory chips to companies including Nvidia.
The dispute largely centred on how the couple’s assets should be divided.
During an earlier ruling in 2024, Roh’s lawyers successfully argued that her father, former South Korean President Roh Tae-woo, had played a significant role in supporting Chey’s business expansion by providing 30 billion won from a secret political slush fund in 1991. That decision led to the larger 1.38 trillion won settlement.
However, South Korea’s Supreme Court later overturned that ruling, deciding that the funds had been illegally obtained and therefore could not be treated as part of the couple’s marital assets. The latest judgment reflects that decision.
The high-profile divorce has attracted widespread attention in South Korea, where SK Group is regarded as one of the country’s most influential corporations.
Founded as a textile business in 1953, SK has grown into South Korea’s second-largest conglomerate after Samsung. Its businesses include SK Telecom, one of the country’s leading mobile network providers, and SK Hynix, which recently surpassed a market valuation of $1 trillion on the South Korean stock market amid soaring demand for AI-related semiconductor technology.
The company’s international profile also received a boost after SK Hynix completed a record-breaking $26.5 billion listing in New York, the largest share offering by a foreign company in the United States.
Last month, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung publicly praised Chey during the launch of a national artificial intelligence investment initiative, describing him and Samsung Chairman Jay Y. Lee as “heroes of the Korean people.”
SK Group has not publicly commented on the latest court ruling.
