A Korean tech billionaire could be ordered to pay his ex-spouse nearly $1 billion in divorce payout after falling in love with another woman and fathering a child with her.
The conclusion of the remanded retrial in the property partitioning suit between Chey Tae-won, 65, chairman of SK Group, and Roh Soh-yeong, 65, director of Art Center Nabi, will come on Friday, July 24.
The court's decision comes nine months after the Supreme Court finalized their divorce last October.
The couple married in 1988 and have three children together. But in 2015, Chey, who is chairman of SK Group, revealed he had a child with another woman.
The stunning admission by Chey ended a marriage that had once been hailed as South Korea’s “wedding of the century.”
Roh initially refused to grant him a divorce, saying she intended to protect the family. She later changed course, writing that it might be right to let her husband pursue the “happiness” he wanted.
The other woman in the love triangle, Kim Hee-young, is now Chey’s longtime partner. Kim, who goes by the English name Chloe, leads a charitable foundation the couple established and has appeared in public alongside the billionaire. She’s 50 years old, according to corporate filings cited by the Wall Street Journal.
Roh later sued Kim over the affair and won damages worth roughly $1.5 million after a court found the relationship and the child born outside the marriage had inflicted emotional harm and helped destroy the couple’s trust.
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The feud soon widened into a high-stakes battle over the origins of the SK fortune.
Roh’s lawyers produced a handwritten note apparently kept by her mother that listed “Sunkyong” — SK’s former name — beside “30 billion won,” or about $23 million.
They argued the note supported claims that Roh’s father secretly provided money to Chey’s father that helped the family expand its business empire. Chey’s attorneys have denied that SK received the alleged funds.
In 2024, a court ordered Chey to give Roh 35% of his assets,$1 billion, worth close to $1 billion at the time.
But after Chey appealed, the Supreme Court overturned the ruling, saying it had improperly counted alleged illicit funds from Roh’s father, former president Roh Tae-woo, toward her contribution to the couple’s wealth.
Roh, the daughter of a former South Korean president, has argued that her family’s political and social support aided SK’s rise from a mid-sized energy company into one of South Korea’s largest business groups. Chey maintained that his SK Inc. shares originated from assets provided by his father and should be treated as separate property.
The chipmaker’s shares have risen roughly tenfold since the beginning of 2025, helping more than double Chey’s fortune to about $5 billion.
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