{"id":708727,"date":"2026-07-24T11:43:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T11:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/708727\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T11:43:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T11:43:09","slug":"sk-group-tech-titan-chey-tae-won-ordered-to-pay-ex-wife-644m-in-divorce-settlement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/708727\/","title":{"rendered":"SK Group: Tech titan Chey Tae-won ordered to pay ex-wife $644m in divorce settlement"},"content":{"rendered":"

The chairman of corporate giant SK Group has been ordered by a South Korean court to pay his ex-wife 944bn won (\u00a3483m; $644m) in a case that local media has called the “divorce of the century<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

The award, which still needs to be finalised, is below the initial 1.38tn won that chairman Chey Tae-won was told to pay Roh Soh-yeong in 2024.<\/p>\n

It comes more than a decade after his marriage to Roh – the daughter of a former president – fell apart following the revelation he had fathered a child with another woman.<\/p>\n

SK Group runs SK Hynix, the semiconductor giant that supplies chips to Nvidia and recently made a record-setting debut on the US stock market<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chey’s lawyers said “Chairman Chey Tae-won is deeply sorry in that [the divorce] proceedings so far have caused concern to many people. We will share specific response to the verdict after we closely review the ruling.”<\/p>\n

SK Group is one of South Korea’s chaebols – family-owned conglomerates that dominate the country’s economy.<\/p>\n

The verdict comes after deliberation over the division of assets between Roh and Chey, who had been married for 35 years.<\/p>\n

During the earlier trial in 2024, Roh’s legal team had successfully argued that Chey had received significant help from his ex-wife’s father, Roh Tae-woo, who had served as the country’s president between 1988 to 1993.<\/p>\n

The court had determined that the strongman had given Chey 30bn Korean won from his slush fund in 1991, and told Chey to pay 1.38tn to his ex-wife.<\/p>\n

But the Supreme Court overturned the verdict last year, ruling that the slush funds were illegally obtained and could not be considered as part of the couple’s assets.<\/p>\n

The case has gripped South Korea.<\/p>\n

SK Group began as a textile company in 1953 but quickly grew across a wide swath of industries to become one of South Korea’s biggest conglomerates.<\/p>\n

Today, it is the second largest chaebol after the Samsung group. South Korean people buy phone plans from SK Telecom and fill their vehicles at SK petrol stations.<\/p>\n

The group gained global prominence after its subsidiary SK Hynix found itself at the centre of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. In May, the chipmaker surpassed $1tn (\u00a3750bn) on the South Korean stock market.<\/p>\n

As SK Hynix’s value soared, the SK Group and its chairman Chey’s status also rose. <\/p>\n

Last month, President Lee Jae Myung commended Chey during the unveiling of a landmark AI investment plan<\/a>, calling him and Samsung chairman JY Lee “Heroes of Korean People.”<\/p>\n

The company also raised $26.5bn in its New York share offering, marking the largest ever listing by a foreign firm in the US.<\/p>\n

The BBC has contacted SK Group for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The chairman of corporate giant SK Group has been ordered by a South Korean court to pay his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":708728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-708727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/708728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}