South Korean billionaire Chey Tae-won ordered to pay ex-wife $644 million in record divorce

A Seoul appeals court ordered SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won to pay his former wife $644 million (944 billion won) in cash, the largest divorce award in South Korean history, closing a nine-year fight over a fortune that multiplied several times over while the case was still running.

The Seoul High Court's first family division, presiding judge Lee Sang-ju, delivered the ruling on Friday afternoon. It attached annual interest of 5 percent until the sum is paid, and required cash rather than a transfer of stock, citing the importance of Chey's shareholding to his control of the conglomerate. Roh Soh-yeong, 65, director of the Art Center Nabi in Seoul and daughter of the late president Roh Tae-woo, receives one-third of the divisible marital assets.

The figure falls below the roughly $1 billion (1.3808 trillion won) awarded by an appellate court in 2024, which the Supreme Court overturned in October and sent back for recalculation. It is about 14 times the 66.5 billion won the trial court granted in 2022.

The valuation fight

The central dispute was when to value Chey's stake in SK Inc. The court used the closing price on April 16, 2024, the day arguments concluded in the earlier appellate hearing, when the shares finished at 160,600 won. By June 26 this year, when arguments closed in the retrial, SK Inc. had reached 815,000 won. Judges reflected part of that increase in setting the division ratio rather than moving the valuation date, an approach that held the award well below what a later date would have produced.

The Supreme Court's October decision had already removed the other pillar of the 2024 judgment. That ruling counted 30 billion won channelled to SK by Roh Tae-woo, who governed from 1988 to 1993, as a contribution by his daughter to the couple's joint wealth. The Supreme Court rejected the reasoning while finalising the divorce itself and a 2 billion won alimony award, remitting only the property division.

Nine years and an AI boom

Chey and Roh met as students at the University of Chicago and married in 1988 at the presidential Blue House, a match between a chaebol heir and a sitting president's daughter that Korean media labelled the wedding of the century. Chey wrote to a newspaper in 2015 acknowledging he had become estranged from his wife and had fathered a child with another woman. He filed for divorce mediation in 2017. Mediation collapsed, and the litigation ran from there.

The assets in dispute changed character entirely during those years. SK Hynix traded at about 33,000 won when Chey declared the marriage over. The chipmaker passed Samsung Electronics in June to become South Korea's most valuable listed company, and Chey rang the Nasdaq opening bell on July 10 for a $26.5 billion listing. Its Seoul-listed shares have gained close to 150 percent this year, while SK Inc. is up about 143 percent.

Those returns trace to a decision widely criticised at the time. SK bought a 21 percent stake in the loss-making Hynix Semiconductor in 2012 for 3.37 trillion won, then the largest corporate acquisition in South Korean history, over internal opposition. Chey pushed the company toward high-bandwidth memory, a niche technology that became a core component of Nvidia's artificial intelligence accelerators.

What he holds, and how he pays

Chey owns 17.9 percent of SK Inc. and is its largest shareholder. He holds no direct stake in SK Hynix. SK Inc. owns roughly 32 percent of SK Square, which in turn holds about 20 percent of the chipmaker.

Forbes estimated his fortune at $5.4 billion on Friday, ranking him ninth in South Korea, against about $1 billion at the start of 2025 and 18th place as recently as April. Settling the award in cash will most likely require asset sales, borrowing or pledging shares as collateral, given that the court has instructed him to retain the stock that holds most of his wealth.

SK Inc. closed 3.8 percent lower at 630,000 won on Friday. SK Hynix fell 8.3 percent to 1,759,000 won in Seoul, and its Nasdaq-listed shares slipped in pre-market trading.

Chey was convicted in 2013 of misappropriating company funds, pardoned by then-president Park Geun-hye and restored to his post in 2016. He has led SK since the death of his father, Chey Jong-hyun, in 1998.

Lawyers for Chey said they would state a position after reviewing the judgment. Roh's representative left the courthouse without comment. Either side may take the property division back to the Supreme Court, though the divorce and the alimony award are already settled.