"The Divorce of the Century": SK CEO to Pay Ex-Wife $643 Million but Retain Control of SK Hynix

On July 24, the Seoul High Court ordered SK Group Chairman Choi Tae-won to pay his ex-wife, Roh So-yeon—the daughter of former South Korean President Roh Tae-woo—944 billion won in cash ($643 million). If the parties do not appeal the ruling, the divorce will be the most expensive in South Korean history. According to analysts, the ruling will not affect the businessman’s control over SK Hynix, Bloomberg reports.

Ro So-yeon was seeking nearly 1.4 trillion won ($958 million). In 2024, she claimed more than 40% of the SK Inc. shares owned by Choi, which could have called into question his control over the holding company and, through it, over SK Hynix.

According to Bloomberg , while calculating the assets subject to division, the value of Choe’s stake in SK Inc. was taken into account, even though the businessman insisted that the shares should not be included in the total estate because they were inherited. Choe retained the shares himself; his ex-wife agreed to a cash settlement. However, the amount turned out to be nearly one-third less than what the lower court had determined in 2024.

Choi does not directly hold a large stake in SK Hynix, but he is the largest shareholder of SK Inc. The holding company controls SK Square, the largest shareholder of the chipmaker. As a result, investors were primarily concerned about a forced sale of Choi’s stake in SK Inc. After volatile trading, the holding company’s shares in Seoul closed down 3.8%. Shares of memory chip manufacturer SK Hynix also fell sharply—by 8.3%—while its American Depositary Receipts in New York plummeted by 7.5%.

“The market had feared that he would have to sell his stake, but the decision removes a significant portion of the short-term risks,” Bloomberg quotes Jeon In-yoon, head of Fibonacci Asset Management Global, as saying. It is crucial that the court allowed Choi to retain control of SK Inc., and he will be able to pay off his debt using the company’s dividends, the expert noted.

The court did not base its assessment of the SK CEO’s net worth on the most recent data. A date prior to the sharp rise in SK’s stock price was chosen for the calculation, even though his ex-wife had sought a later valuation. As a result, she received about one-third of her ex-husband’s fortune, instead of the half she had claimed, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Bloomberg estimates Choe’s current net worth at approximately $5.6 billion, making him the ninth-richest person in South Korea. According to the agency’s estimates, the businessman’s wealth has more than doubled in the past year alone, driven by the artificial intelligence boom and demand for SK Hynix’s cutting-edge memory chips.

Choi and Ro So-yeon were married in 1988 at the Blue House, the presidential residence. The union of these political and business dynasties in Korea was dubbed the “marriage of the century.” But over the years, the story of this ideal, large family turned into “a saga in the spirit of Korean dramas—complete with money, romance, corruption, and betrayal,” writes the WSJ.

In 2015, Choi published a three-page letter in a Korean newspaper announcing that he wanted a divorce, had fallen in love with another woman, and had a child with her. At first, Ro So-yeon refused to divorce him, but in 2019 she relented and demanded half of her husband’s fortune. The first court awarded her only about $50 million—she called this amount “a denial of women’s devotion to the family.”

Both sides have the right to appeal the current ruling to the Supreme Court, which would make this the fifth such proceeding. Choe’s attorneys have not ruled out this possibility while they review the ruling; attorney Ro So-yeon declined to comment, according to the WSJ.

The outcome of the case could set a precedent for recognizing a spouse’s contribution to building a major business empire, particularly in disputes over the division of assets, according to Bloomberg. This was precisely the argument put forward by Ro So-yeon: she argued that her family’s political support helped SK grow from a mid-sized energy company into one of the country’s largest conglomerates.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor