Chey Tae-won and Roh Soh-yeong divorced after 35 years, 9 months of marriage. The settlement was reportedly an estimated $1B. See the full timeline.
Figures are reported estimates. Last updated Oct 2026.
Record South Korean divorce ruling involving the head of SK Group.
Chey Tae-won, the chairman of South Korea's SK Group, one of the country's biggest conglomerates, married Roh Soh-yeong, the daughter of the former South Korean president Roh Tae-woo, in the late 1980s. The match joined a leading business family with a political one, and it was widely seen in Korea as a powerful alliance. The couple had three children and for many years kept up the appearance of a stable family, while Chey took on the leadership of SK from his late father's generation.
SK Group grew from a textile business into a conglomerate with major interests in energy, telecommunications, chemicals and semiconductors, including SK Hynix. Chey became chairman in the late 1990s after the death of his brother and predecessor, and led the group through a period of rapid expansion. His personal wealth rests largely on his holding in SK Inc., the group's holding company, and on the dividends it pays. Roh's claim was that she had contributed to the group's growth through her family connections.
The couple married in 1988. In 2015 Chey publicly admitted to an extramarital relationship and to having a child outside the marriage, and he asked for a divorce, which Roh at first resisted. The legal proceedings began in 2017 and went through several stages. A family court ruled on the case in 2022, and an appeals court issued a much larger award in May 2024. The long dispute made the case one of the best-known family-law cases in Korean history.
In May 2024 the Seoul High Court ordered Chey to pay Roh about 1.38 trillion won, roughly $1 billion, in a property settlement, along with a smaller sum in compensation, making it the largest divorce award in South Korean history. The ruling was later challenged, with Chey's side claiming that the court had made a significant error in its calculations. The final outcome of the appeals should be checked before anyone relies on the figure.
The size of the award rested on the court's view of how much Roh had contributed to the growth of SK. A key point in the argument was whether money from her father, the former president, had helped to build the company, a claim that the court examined closely. The long marriage, the scale of the shareholding and Chey's admission of an affair all supported a substantial award, and the headline figure was driven by the high value of SK shares.
The ruling raised questions about the future of Chey's control over SK, since much of his wealth is tied up in shares of the holding company, and a payment of this size could in theory require him to sell stock. The case was watched closely by investors and by other family-run conglomerates in Korea, known as chaebol, which have rarely had to account for their wealth in such a public forum.
The Chey and Roh case is the largest divorce award in Korean history and sits among the top billion-dollar settlements worldwide, alongside Harold Hamm's. Like the Hamm case, it turned on a spouse's claim to have contributed to a business, and it is a good example of how the courts weigh such claims against the idea that a company's success belongs to the person who runs it.
Roh Tae-woo, her father, served as president of South Korea from 1988 to 1993. Chey's decision to go public about his affair in 2015 was highly unusual for a leader of a Korean conglomerate. The case featured arguments about whether secret funds from the former president had been used to support SK's early growth. The amount, about $1 billion, is a reported figure and was disputed on appeal.
Roh Soh-yeong's reported settlement was about $1 billion.
They married in 1988 and divorced in 2024, a marriage of roughly 36 years.
No prenuptial agreement was reported.
Yes, the family is reported to include 3 children.
Reported assets include: SK Group shares, real estate.
The size of the award rested on the court's view of how much Roh had contributed to the growth of SK. A key point in the argument was whether money from her father, the former president, had helped to build the company, a claim that the court examined closely.
* Settlement terms were not publicly disclosed. This figure is an estimate.