In one of the largest divorce cases in South Korean history, a court has ruled that Chey Tae-won, chairman of SK Group, one of the country’s biggest business conglomerates, must pay his former wife, Roh Soh-yeong, 944 billion won (roughly $644 million).

The case, which local media have dubbed the “divorce of the century”, has not yet been finally settled, as the ruling still needs to be confirmed. The sum is lower than the 1.38 trillion won a court had previously awarded in 2024.

The child with another woman

Chey and Roh, the daughter of former South Korean president Roh Tae-woo, were married for 37 years. Their relationship broke down more than a decade ago, after it emerged that the businessman had had a child with another woman.

Following the latest court decision, lawyers for the SK Group chief said he “deeply regrets that the divorce proceedings have caused concern to so many people” and that he would comment in detail once he had reviewed the full reasoning behind the ruling.

The dispute over the fortune and the reversal of the first ruling

The legal battle centred on the division of the couple’s shared assets.

In the original 2024 ruling, Roh’s side had argued that Chey’s business success was owed in significant part to support he had received from her father, who served as president of South Korea from 1988 to 1993.

The court had ruled at the time that Roh Tae-woo had channelled around 30 billion won from a secret political fund to Chey in 1991, a finding that led to the 1.38 trillion won compensation award.

The Supreme Court, however, overturned that ruling, finding that the funds in question had been obtained illegally and could not be counted as part of the couple’s shared property.

The SK Group empire and its soaring valuation

SK Group is South Korea’s second-largest family-run business conglomerate after Samsung. Founded in 1953 as a textile company, it has grown into one of the country’s most important industrial groups, with operations spanning telecommunications, energy and technology.

Its semiconductor subsidiary, SK Hynix, has become a leading supplier of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, which are used alongside Nvidia’s artificial intelligence processors, making it one of the biggest beneficiaries of surging demand for advanced semiconductors.

The company has enjoyed spectacular growth on the back of the AI boom, with its market value passing the $1 trillion mark on the South Korean stock exchange in May.

SK Hynix also recently completed a landmark listing on the Nasdaq exchange in New York, raising $26.5 billion in the largest ever listing by a foreign company in the United States. The group’s business success has also considerably boosted Chey’s standing; a few weeks ago he received public congratulations from South Korean President Lee Jae Myung for his contribution to investment in artificial intelligence.