( Chey Tae-won and his former wife, Roh Soh-yeong. Photo by The Korea JoongAng Daily)
South Korean tech billionaire and SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won could be ordered to pay his ex-wife nearly $1 billion as the country’s widely dubbed “divorce of the century” approaches a decisive court ruling.
Chey, 65, shocked South Korea in 2015 when he publicly admitted in a three-page newspaper letter that he was in love with another woman and had fathered a child with her, declaring his marriage beyond repair and expressing a desire for a clean break.
His former wife, Roh Soh-yeong, daughter of the late South Korean President Roh Tae-woo, is seeking half of Chey’s fortune and has urged the court to value his assets at current market prices, following a sharp surge in the value of SK Hynix, the memory-chip maker supplying Nvidia’s AI systems.
The company’s shares have risen roughly tenfold since the start of 2025, helping more than double Chey’s estimated fortune to about $5 billion and significantly raising the stakes of the potential divorce settlement.
The legal battle has gripped South Korea, combining a high-profile affair, political family ties, allegations surrounding secret funding behind the SK business empire, and a fight over one of the country’s largest conglomerates.
In announcing the collapse of his marriage, Chey had quoted the opening line of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina about happy families all resembling one another while unhappy families each suffer in their own distinct way.
Roh had previously been awarded about $1.5 million in damages after a court found that Chey’s affair and the child born outside the marriage caused her emotional distress and eroded the couple’s trust.
An appeals court had earlier granted Roh 35% of Chey’s assets, but South Korea’s Supreme Court upheld the divorce while ordering a fresh hearing on the property settlement, having rejected part of the legal basis used for the earlier valuation.
The central question now before the court is whether Chey’s wealth should be calculated based on its value before the AI boom or at today’s significantly higher valuation.
