One of South Korea’s most high-profile and costly divorce cases has concluded a major new chapter this week, with a revised ruling cutting the massive settlement that leading tech tycoon Chey Tae-won must pay to his ex-wife Roh Soh-yeong to $644 million.
Chey, 65, serves as chairman of SK Group, the South Korean conglomerate that owns SK hynix, a global industry-leading memory chip manufacturer that counts AI giant Nvidia among its key clients. SK Group is widely regarded as a core pillar of South Korea’s tech-driven national economy, making the long-running legal battle over the couple’s assets a closely watched case both in business and political circles.
The pair were married in 1988 at Seoul’s presidential Blue House, when Roh’s father Roh Tae-woo was serving as South Korea’s president. Though they share three children, the couple has lived separately for more than 15 years. Chey publicly admitted to fathering a child with another woman in 2015, and filed for divorce two years later. Formal court proceedings began in 2022 after mediation efforts failed to resolve the split.
In 2024, the Seoul High Court issued an initial ruling ordering Chey to pay Roh a record 1.38 trillion won, equal to roughly $940 million at the time. The unprecedented size of the payout led South Korean media to label the dispute the “divorce of the century.” Chey appealed the ruling to South Korea’s Supreme Court, which sent the case back to the lower court for re-evaluation. That reconsideration resulted in Friday’s adjusted ruling, cutting the settlement to 944 billion won ($644 million). The revised ruling does not mark the end of the legal process, however: either party still has the right to appeal the new decision back to the Supreme Court for a final ruling.
At the heart of the acrimonious dispute has been debate over the definition and valuation of the couple’s shared marital assets, primarily Chey’s multi-billion dollar controlling stake in SK Group. The 2024 lower court ruling included a 30 billion won slush fund established by Roh’s father to support SK Group’s early growth as part of Roh’s contribution to the couple’s shared assets, arguing that the fund helped grow Chey’s holdings. But last October, the Supreme Court struck down that reasoning, ruling the slush fund amounted to illegal bribes and could not be counted as a legitimate contribution to the marital estate.
In Friday’s new ruling, the Seoul High Court upheld Roh’s entitlement to one-third of the couple’s shared assets accumulated during the marriage. The ruling noted that Chey’s SK Group shareholdings grew substantially during the marriage through his executive work, while Roh contributed to that growth through managing the household, raising the couple’s children, and carrying out public-facing duties on behalf of the conglomerate. The court also explicitly accounted for the dramatic surge in SK Group’s share value that has occurred since the couple separated, driven in large part by the global AI boom that has sent demand for SK hynix’s memory chips soaring. SK Group’s stock price has more than tripled since December 2015, when Chey’s extramarital affair became public. Chey’s current stake in the conglomerate is valued at approximately $5.5 billion based on recent public regulatory filings.
Beyond the property settlement, the Supreme Court has already ordered Chey to pay a separate 2 billion won in alimony to Roh. Roh, 65, has built an independent career in the cultural sector, where she operates a prominent digital art museum.