A South Korean court on Friday ordered SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won to pay his former wife Roh Soh-yeong 944 billion won (US$644 million) in a divorce-related property division case, lower than a previous 1.38 trillion won award that had drawn scrutiny of his stake in the group’s holding company.
If finalised, the ruling from the Seoul High Court would be South Korea’s most expensive divorce ever. Chey is worth about US$5.6 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with his net worth more than doubling in the last year.
Chey married Roh, the daughter of a former president, in 1988, uniting two storied political and business dynasties in what was one of the country’s most high-profile weddings at the time. They have three children together. But things began to unravel publicly in 2015, when Chey, who is chairman of SK Group, revealed he had a child with another woman.
Chey’s lawyer told reporters outside the court that the billionaire felt sorry for any public concern caused by the divorce proceedings, adding that they would decide on whether to appeal the verdict after they had seen the court’s full judgement.
SK Hynix has emerged as one of the biggest winners from booming demand for high-bandwidth memory chips used in artificial intelligence, lifting the value of the broader SK empire and raising the financial stakes of the case. The company vaulted into the global spotlight after raising US$26.5 billion in a US listing this month, a record for a foreign issuer, and its market value has topped US$1 trillion.