South Korean tech billionaire and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won is facing the possibility of paying nearly $1 billion to his ex-wife, Roh Soh-yeong, as one of the country’s most closely watched divorce cases heads toward a decisive court ruling. Widely described as South Korea’s “divorce of the century,” the case could result in one of the largest divorce settlements in the nation’s history.
The legal battle stems from Chey’s public confession in 2015, when he admitted in a three-page newspaper letter that he was in love with another woman and had fathered a child outside his marriage. The 65-year-old businessman declared that his marriage was beyond repair and said he wanted a “clean end.”
Roh Soh-yeong, the daughter of late South Korean President Roh Tae-woo, is seeking half of Chey’s fortune. She has asked the court to calculate his wealth using its current market value following a massive rise in the share price of SK Hynix, the semiconductor company that supplies memory chips for Nvidia’s artificial intelligence systems.
The company’s shares have risen dramatically since the beginning of 2025, pushing Chey’s estimated net worth to around $5 billion and significantly increasing the value of the potential divorce payout.
The case has attracted nationwide attention because it combines a high-profile extramarital affair, political family ties, allegations surrounding the growth of the SK business empire and a dispute over one of South Korea’s largest conglomerates.
When announcing the breakdown of his marriage, Chey quoted the opening line of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, saying, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Roh had previously been awarded about $1.5 million in damages after a court ruled that Chey’s affair and child outside the marriage caused her emotional distress and destroyed the trust in their relationship.
Although an appeals court earlier awarded Roh 35% of Chey’s assets, South Korea’s Supreme Court upheld the divorce but ordered a fresh hearing on the property settlement after rejecting part of the legal reasoning used to determine the value of the assets.
The court will now decide whether Chey’s fortune should be valued based on its worth before the artificial intelligence boom or at today’s significantly higher market valuation—a decision that could determine whether the final settlement approaches the $1 billion mark.
