$640 MILLION Divorce Shock! Korean Billionaire Ordered to Pay Ex-Wife

A South Korean court just handed out a $640 million divorce payout that shows how the artificial intelligence boom is making the richest players even richer while everyone else watches from the sidelines.

Story Snapshot

SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won was ordered to pay his ex-wife 944 billion won, the largest divorce asset award in South Korean history.
The fight centers on whether his soaring stock in SK’s holding company and chip maker SK Hynix counts as “marital property” from their long marriage.
Courts agreed his ex-wife, Roh Soh-yeong, helped preserve and grow family wealth but cut back her claim tied to money from her ex-president father.
The case highlights how political families, global tech wealth, and opaque courts often play by different rules than ordinary workers and small business owners.

Record divorce payout in a country grappling with tech-era inequality

A Seoul appeals court ordered SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won to pay his ex-wife, art center director Roh Soh-yeong, 944 billion won in cash, or about $640 million, in July 2026. The court said this represents roughly one-third of the couple’s marital assets, making it the largest divorce asset award in South Korean history. Judges also kept a separate 2 billion won alimony award in place, linked to Chey’s long-running affair and child born outside the marriage.

Reporters describe the nine-year legal battle as South Korea’s “divorce of the century” because of both the giant payout and the political names involved. Roh is the daughter of former president Roh Tae-woo, while Chey controls SK Group, a global energy and technology conglomerate that owns chip maker SK Hynix. The case unfolded as SK Hynix became a key supplier of high-bandwidth memory chips for artificial intelligence systems, boosting Chey’s wealth and drawing more public attention.

How the AI boom and family power shaped the fight over ‘marital’ wealth

The central legal question was whether Chey’s valuable stake in SK Inc., the group’s holding company, should count as joint marital property or remain his separate asset. Earlier, the Seoul High Court in 2024 ruled that his SK Inc. shares were part of the couple’s shared estate and ordered a far larger payout of 1.38 trillion won plus 2 billion won in alimony. That ruling was widely reported as the biggest divorce settlement in South Korean history and was based partly on Roh’s family’s support for SK’s early growth.

Media reports say judges credited Roh with helping preserve and grow family wealth through homemaking, raising three children, and public work that supported SK Group’s image and business ties. At one stage, the court even accepted arguments that a 30 billion won “slush fund” from her father, then-president Roh Tae-woo, had helped SK expand and could count as part of her contribution. This view treated political access and insider capital as a key driver of corporate success, an idea that hits a nerve for people who feel the system is rigged for the well-connected.

Supreme Court pushback shows limits on counting political money as marital contribution

South Korea’s Supreme Court stepped in during October 2025 and partially overturned the record 1.38 trillion won award. The top court ruled that even if funds from Roh’s father were used to help SK, that money likely came from illegal bribes and could not be treated as her personal contribution when dividing marital assets. The justices sent the property-division part of the case back to the Seoul High Court, but they left the 2 billion won alimony award in place, citing Chey’s infidelity and the damage it caused to the marriage.

After the Supreme Court ruling, the lower court recalculated the estate and settled on the 944 billion won payout, a big cut from the original number but still a record. A separate report says the court explicitly noted the sharp rise in the value of Chey’s shareholdings when setting the division ratio, showing that market gains during the artificial intelligence boom were part of the backdrop even if not fully spelled out in the numbers. Legal experts quoted in the press say the case shows how hard it is to untangle which wealth comes from skill and risk and which comes from political favors and family networks.

Why this billionaire divorce speaks to global anger at elites and broken systems

For many readers in the United States, this story from Seoul may feel strangely familiar. A politically connected billionaire rides a historic tech wave, builds immense stock wealth, and then fights in court over how much of that fortune his spouse deserves. Meanwhile, regular families face rising prices, unstable jobs, and shrinking trust in both big business and government. The numbers here—1.38 trillion won first, then 944 billion won—are so large they hardly feel real, yet they come from courtrooms that are supposed to deliver basic fairness.

$SKYH A Seoul court ordered SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won to pay his ex-wife Roh Soh-yeong a record $944 billion ($645 million USD) in their divorce, valuing his stake in SK Inc. (034730.KS) using its April 2024 price rather than the much higher 2026 level after the AI boom.… pic.twitter.com/ENesQw4OaT

— Canadian Jennifer 🇨🇦 (@cdntradegrljenn) July 28, 2026

The case also shows how deeply politics and money can mix at the top. Courts openly discussed a secret 30 billion won fund tied to a sitting president, channeled into a private business group and then into a family’s wealth. Even though the Supreme Court ultimately rejected counting that money as part of Roh’s marital contribution, the fact that such a fund existed at all reinforces a belief shared by many Americans on both the right and the left: there is one system for ordinary citizens, and another for the political and corporate elite who help each other stay rich, powerful, and protected.