South Korea’s AI chip tycoon has appealed a court ruling ordering him to pay $666 million to his former wife in the country’s largest-ever divorce settlement, his lawyers said Saturday.<\/p>\n
Chey Tae-won, 65, is the chairman of the SK Group, which owns world-leading memory chipmaker SK hynix — a pillar of South Korea’s tech-led economy.<\/p>\n
Seoul High Court in 2024 had told him to pay 1.38 trillion won to his ex-wife Roh Soh-yeong, and the sum — equal to more than $1 billion at the exchange rate at the time of the ruling — led local media to dub it the “divorce of the century”.<\/p>\n
Chey appealed to the Supreme Court, which told the high court to reconsider its 2024 decision and led to the tycoon’s reduced divorce bill of 944 billion won ($666 million) in July this year — still the largest divorce asset settlement ever awarded in South Korea.<\/p>\n
Seoul High Court ruled last month that Roh was entitled to a cash payout worth one-third of the couple’s marital assets, including Chey’s SK shares, citing her family role and support for SK Group activities.<\/p>\n
The tycoon has appealed that July ruling, his lawyers said Saturday, which brings the case to the country’s highest court again.<\/p>\n
“After careful consideration of various factors, Chairman Chey Tae-won has filed an appeal to the Supreme Court,” his lawyers said in a statement sent to AFP.<\/p>\n
“We will approach the upcoming procedures with a commitment to minimizing any negative impact on shareholders and the Group’s management.”<\/p>\n
Roh’s legal team declined to comment to AFP.<\/p>\n
The appeal could extend a closely watched legal battle that has drawn attention to Chey’s control of SK Group as the AI boom boosts the value of its chip assets.<\/p>\n
SK Group shares have more than tripled in value since December 2015, when Chey publicly disclosed his extramarital affair.<\/p>\n
South Korean outlet Money Today reported that Chey offered Roh a mix of stock and cash to settle the asset division to limit market impact, but she reportedly demanded full payment in cash, which would require him to sell a large amount of shares — prompting his appeal.<\/p>\n
Chey and Roh — daughter of a former South Korea president — married in 1988 and have three children together, but the couple are believed to have lived apart for more than 15 years. In 2015 Chey admitted to fathering a child with his lover.<\/p>\n
The 2024 ruling ordering the payout to Roh cited a 30 billion won slush fund her ex-president father, Roh Tae-woo, used to propel SK Group’s growth.<\/p>\n
But in October the Supreme Court quashed that argument, saying that any such cash likely stemmed from illegal bribes and therefore should not be counted.<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court had separately ordered Chey and his lover to pay Roh 2 billion won in alimony, which his lover, Kim Hee-young, paid in 2024.<\/p>\n
AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Korea’s AI chip tycoon has appealed a court ruling ordering him to pay $666 million to his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[1523,134,2329,2333,2328,2336,2331,2330,2332,2334,2335,241,240,1583,2327,2326,207],"class_list":["post-120566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sk","tag-breaking-news","tag-china","tag-english-daily","tag-finance","tag-free-newspaper","tag-headlines","tag-hong-kong-media","tag-hong-kong-news","tag-hong-kong-news-media","tag-latest-news","tag-sing-tao","tag-sk","tag-sk-group","tag-sports","tag-standard","tag-the-standard","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}