South Korean AI billionaire ordered to pay $645 million in high-profile divorce case

A Seoul appeals court on Friday ordered SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won to pay about $645 million in cash to his former wife Roh Soh-yeong, concluding a ten-year divorce battle that has drawn public attention in South Korea. The court awarded Roh roughly one-third of Chey’s estimated $5 billion wealth, rather than the half she had sought.

Chey, 65, built his fortune largely through the surge in shares of memory-chip maker SK Hynix, a key supplier to Nvidia, as demand for artificial-intelligence hardware rose. His lawyers said they are reviewing the decision and have not ruled out an appeal to the Supreme Court.

The dispute traces back to 2015, when Chey publicly announced in a newspaper letter that he was ending his 27-year marriage to Roh, the daughter of former President Roh Tae-woo, after fathering a child with another woman, Kim Hee-young (also known as Chloe). Roh initially opposed divorce but later filed suit seeking half of Chey’s assets.

In addition to the divorce, Roh sued Kim, and a lower court ordered Chey and Kim to jointly pay Roh about $1.5 million in damages, finding the affair contributed to the marriage’s breakdown. Roh’s legal team also presented a handwritten note alleging that her father had funneled money to Chey’s family decades earlier, a claim Chey’s lawyers denied.

The case has been closely watched because of the scale of the assets involved and the connection to South Korea’s AI industry, with SK Hynix’s stock price more than doubling as AI demand surged.