SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won must hand his ex-wife $645 million after a South Korean appeals court rejected her demand for nearly $1 billion, capping a decade-long legal fight that began when he publicly confessed to fathering a child with another woman.
The ruling lands one of the largest divorce payouts in South Korean history. Chey, 65, chairs one of the country's most powerful conglomerates, a sprawling enterprise whose semiconductor arm, SK Hynix, supplies the memory chips that power Nvidia's artificial-intelligence systems. As AI demand sent SK Hynix shares soaring in recent years, Chey's personal fortune more than doubled, making the size of the settlement a moving target throughout the proceedings.
His ex-wife, Roh Soh-yeong, had sought roughly half of Chey's estimated $5 billion fortune. The appeals court awarded her approximately one-third of his calculated wealth instead, the New York Post reported, and it based the valuation on Chey's holdings before the AI-era share surge, a decision that effectively shaved hundreds of millions off what Roh might have received had the court used current market prices.
Chey and Roh married in 1988 at the presidential Blue House, months after her father, Roh Tae-woo, took office as South Korea's president. The union joined political royalty with corporate power, and for 27 years it held.
Then, in 2015, Chey published a three-page letter in a South Korean newspaper confessing that he had fallen in love with another woman, Kim Hee-young, known in English as Chloe, and had fathered a child with her. He wrote that he wanted a "clean end" to his marriage.
Roh initially vowed to keep the family together and resist divorce. She later reversed course, demanding half of Chey's fortune and suing Kim Hee-young over the affair. A separate court ordered Chey and Kim to jointly pay Roh approximately $1.5 million in damages, finding the affair and the child born outside the marriage contributed to the breakdown.
South Korean media dubbed the proceedings the "divorce of the century," AP News reported. The case drew sustained public attention in a country where high-profile corporate divorces carry outsized cultural weight.
During the proceedings, Roh's legal team submitted a handwritten note, apparently saved by her mother, that listed "Sunkyong," SK's former corporate name, alongside "30 billion won." Her lawyers argued the note proved that former President Roh Tae-woo had secretly funneled money to Chey's father, helping expand the family business long before Chey took the chairman's seat.
Chey's lawyers denied SK ever received the alleged funds. The source does not specify whether the court gave the note any weight in reaching its final figure. But the claim itself underscores how deeply intertwined South Korean political and corporate dynasties can become, and how tangled the accounting gets when those marriages fall apart.
High-profile divorces that expose the gap between public image and private conduct are hardly unique to South Korea. In the United States, a Vanderbilt heiress recently faced scrutiny after divorce records reportedly contradicted her memoir's claims of financial hardship, a reminder that money disputes in elite divorces rarely stay private for long.
What makes this case unusual, even by billionaire-divorce standards, is the timing. SK Hynix manufactures memory chips critical to Nvidia's AI infrastructure. As the global AI boom accelerated, SK Hynix shares soared, more than doubling Chey's net worth.
Had the appeals court valued Chey's holdings at current market prices, Roh's share would have been substantially larger. Instead, the court pegged its calculation to pre-boom valuations, a methodological choice that benefited Chey by hundreds of millions of dollars. The court did not publicly detail the full valuation methodology it used.
AP News reported the settlement figure at 944 billion won, or roughly $640 million, actually a reduction from a previous ruling of 1.38 trillion won, approximately $940 million. That earlier figure had also included $1.3 million in alimony already ordered.
Chey's lawyers said they were reviewing the ruling and did not rule out another appeal to South Korea's Supreme Court. No timeline for a potential appeal has been announced.
Even at $645 million, the payout falls well short of what Roh sought. She asked for nearly $1 billion. The appeals court said no. Whether she views the outcome as vindication or a partial loss remains unclear, she has not spoken publicly about the ruling.
Chey, meanwhile, retains the bulk of his fortune and his chairmanship of SK Group. Kim Hee-young, described as his longtime partner, remains in his life. The $1.5 million damages award against both of them stands.
The case fits a broader pattern of high-profile divorces reshaping financial futures for both parties. And when the spouse in question chairs a company whose products sit at the center of the global AI race, the stakes extend beyond any single family.
SK Group's semiconductor business is now a linchpin of the AI supply chain. Nvidia depends on SK Hynix memory chips. Any instability at the top of the conglomerate, whether from a leadership distraction, a forced asset sale, or a drawn-out Supreme Court appeal, could ripple outward.
Not every marital split produces this kind of fallout. Some couples manage to part ways without public spectacle, as one recent celebrity divorce demonstrated when both sides kept things civil. But when a marriage connects a former president's daughter to one of Asia's most powerful corporate chairmen, and when the husband's confession arrives in a three-page newspaper letter, civility is not what the public remembers.
Six hundred and forty-five million dollars is a steep price for a broken vow. Then again, Chey still walks away a billionaire, which says less about the court's generosity than about just how much money was on the table to begin with.