South Korea: Ex-wife of a top executive receives the equivalent of 566 million euros in the "divorce of the century"

Chey Tae-won, the head of the South Korean group SK Group — parent company of semiconductor giant SK Hynix — was ordered on Friday by the courts to pay 944 billion won (approximately 566 million euros) to his ex-wife, Roh Soh-yeong, to settle what the country's media have called the "divorce of the century".

This latest decision by the Seoul High Court, issued at the behest of the Supreme Court, overturns an initial ruling from 2024. At that time, the court awarded 1.38 trillion won (830 million euros) to the plaintiff, determining that she was entitled to the equivalent of one-third of the shares in the group held by her ex-husband. The court emphasized that the value of the shares had increased considerably during the marriage and that Roh Soh-yeong had directly contributed to this increase through his work as a housewife, raising their children, and his public activities in support of SK Group.

A legal saga fueled by the artificial intelligence boom

The couple married in 1988 at the Blue House, the presidential palace in Seoul where the bride's father, former President Roh Tae-woo, was then serving. Parents of three children, they had been living separately for about fifteen years. In 2015, the businessman publicly acknowledged having fathered a child out of wedlock.

At the heart of this legal battle, which has been shaking the courts since 2022, lies the spectacular rise in SK Group's value, driven by the global boom in artificial intelligence, in which SK Hynix is ​​a major player. Since Mr. Chey's confession in 2015, the group's stock has more than tripled. In its ruling issued this Friday, the Court indicated that it had adjusted the asset-sharing ratio to take this exceptional valuation into account.

Alongside this asset liquidation procedure, Roh Soh-yeong also obtained from her ex-husband alimony in the form of a single payment of two billion won (approximately 1.2 million euros).