Seoul (CNN) — The AI gold rush is minting new fortunes, but the ex-wife of one of South Korea’s biggest tech titans has failed to win a greater share of his wealth as his company’s stock price has soared.
In another twist in the long-running divorce case that’s captivated the nation, billionaire SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won was ordered on Friday to pay his former wife 944 billion won ($644 million) – well below the amount she sought.
Chey, who also chairs memory chip giant SK Hynix, split from his wife Roh Soh-yeong, the daughter of former South Korean President Roh Tae-woo, more than 10 years ago, when he took the extraordinary step of announcing their marriage was over via a letter to South Korean media.
Since then, she’s fought for a bigger slice of his fortune, arguing in multiple court cases that her father contributed to the company’s growth with an early investment – and that her payout should be based on the 2026 valuation of Chey’s SK Group.
Roh’s assessment would have meant a payout of billions of dollars, inflated by an AI boom that’s boosted demand for the memory chips made by SK Hynix, a subsidiary of SK Group. But the Seoul High Court ruled that the shares should be valued at the date that the appellate court concluded its hearing in 2024, before AI drove prices up fivefold.
The final decision was even less than the previous 2024 ruling, which would have granted Roh about $1 billion in division of property. In October, the Supreme Court overturned the valuation, ruling that Roh’s father’s financial contribution should not be taken into account.
In its ruling, the court said the $644 million award was based on an asset division ratio under which Roh receives one-third and Chey retains two-thirds, and that its judgment was in line with the Supreme Court ruling.
‘Wedding of the century’
When Chey and Roh married in 1988 at the Blue House, the executive office of the president, it was hailed as the “wedding of the century.”
But in 2015, Chey confessed in a public letter to having a child with another woman. In the bitter split, they both filed divorce proceedings, and she demanded alimony payment of 300 million won, or about $260,000, as well as 42.29% of Chey’s SK Group stock holdings. The contentious battle that followed has now become known as the “divorce of the century.”
In 2024, a high court ruled that Chey pay Roh 2 billion won, or $1.5 million, along with 1.38 trillion won in division of property, or about $1 billion. However, the assessment of assets has come into question since then.
In October, the Supreme Court overturned the $1 billion decision, ruling that the money that Roh’s father allegedly gave Chey’s father was illegally obtained.
Before Friday’s ruling, Chey had argued that the division of assets should be calculated at the close of the case hearing in April 2024. Roh had asked for the assets to be valued based on a different date in the divorce proceedings in 2026, then worth significantly more.
The AI effect
When Chey publicly declared his marriage was over in 2015, shares of SK Hynix, a subsidiary under SK Group, were trading at about 33,000 won, or about $30.
Since then, SK Hynix has grown to become one of the world’s most valuable companies.
The memory chipmaker reached a $1 trillion valuation in May, as a surge of investment in artificial intelligence boosted demand for semiconductors needed to run massive new data centers. Earlier this month, SK Hynix raised $26.5 billion in the largest-ever US listing by a foreign company. On Thursday, its US-traded shares closed at $169.50.
The AI boom has turned what was once a slow but steady business into one of the world’s hottest tech trades, bolstering wealth for investors and workers of SK Hynix and its rival Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest memory chipmaker.
That has also launched Chey into a high-profile cabal of tech executives prominently featured on his Instagram under the handle papatonybear. Earlier this year, Chey posted photos and videos of himself with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, all signing a cast on Chey’s arm.
The-CNN-Wire
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