{"id":51796,"date":"2026-07-24T13:31:29","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T07:46:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/?p=51796"},"modified":"2026-07-24T13:31:29","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T07:46:29","slug":"south-korean-tycoon-ordered-to-pay-644m-in-divorce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/south-korean-tycoon-ordered-to-pay-644m-in-divorce\/","title":{"rendered":"South Korean tycoon ordered to pay $644m in divorce"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

A South Korean court ordered an AI chip-manufacturing tycoon on Friday to make a trimmed-down $644 million divorce payment to his former wife.<\/p>\n

Chey Tae-won, 65, is the chairman of the SK Group, which owns world-leading memory chipmaker SK hynix — a pillar of South Korea’s tech-led economy.<\/p>\n

Seoul High Court in 2024 had told him to pay 1.38 trillion won ($940 million) to his ex-wife Roh Soh-yeong, daughter of a former South Korea president.<\/p>\n

The sum — equal to more than $1 billion at the exchange rate at the time of the ruling — led local media to dub it the “divorce of the century”.<\/p>\n

Chey appealed to the Supreme Court, which told the high court to reconsider its 2024 decision and led to the tycoon’s reduced divorce bill of 944 billion won ($644 million).<\/p>\n

The settlement is not yet final, however, as either side may refer it back to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

The acrimonious case centres on the definition and valuation of the couple’s shared assets, including Chey’s lucrative stake in the SK Group.<\/p>\n

Seoul High Court ruled Friday that Roh was entitled to a cash payout worth one-third of the couple’s marital assets.<\/p>\n

“The defendant’s shareholdings increased substantially during the marriage through his management activities,” the court said.<\/p>\n

“The plaintiff contributed to that increase through homemaking, childcare and public-facing activities related to SK Group.”<\/p>\n

Chey and Roh married in 1988, but the couple are believed to have lived apart for more than 15 years. In 2015 he admitted to fathering a child with his lover.<\/p>\n

With SK hynix selling vital memory chips to AI computing company Nvidia, Chey’s stake is now worth roughly $5.5 billion, according to regulatory filings and public data.<\/p>\n

Roh, 65, has three children with Chey and has built a career in the cultural space, running a digital art museum.<\/p>\n

– Bribes –<\/strong><\/p>\n

The pair were wed in Seoul’s presidential Blue House when her father Roh Tae-woo led the country from 1988 to 1993.<\/p>\n

They have battled over the split in the courts since 2022, after Chey filed for divorce in 2017 and mediation broke down.<\/p>\n

The court’s original 2024 ruling ordering the payout to Roh cited a 30 billion won slush fund her ex-president father used to propel SK Group’s growth.<\/p>\n

The court said at the time that could be counted as her contribution towards the couple’s shared assets.<\/p>\n

But in October last year the Supreme Court quashed that argument, saying that any such cash likely stemmed from illegal bribes and therefore should not be counted.<\/p>\n

Another question was whether the dramatic increase in SK Group’s value since the couple’s separation, on the cusp of the AI boom, should be reflected in the asset division.<\/p>\n

“The court took into account the sharp rise in the value of the defendant’s shareholdings when determining the property division ratio,” Friday’s court statement said.<\/p>\n

SK Group shares have more than tripled in value since December 2015, when Chey publicly disclosed his extramarital affair.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court had already separately ordered Chey to make an alimony payment to Roh of 2 billion won.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A South Korean court ordered an AI chip-manufacturing tycoon on Friday to make a trimmed-down $644 million divorce payment to his former wife. Chey Tae-won, 65, is the chairman of the SK Group, which owns world-leading memory chipmaker SK hynix — a pillar of South Korea’s tech-led economy. Seoul High Court in 2024 had told […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51796"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51796"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51798,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51796\/revisions\/51798"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}