The boss of South Korea’s SK Group, parent company of semiconductor giant SK hynix, was ordered Friday to pay 944 billion won ($907 million) to his ex-wife to settle what the country’s media called the “divorce of the century.”
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This latest episode in a legal saga lasting several years saw the Seoul High Court reverse, after being forced to do so by the Supreme Court, a 2024 ruling in which it had awarded 1,380 billion won ($1.33 billion) to plaintiff Roh Soh-yeong after her divorce from SK Group CEO Chey Tae-won.
AFP
The High Court ruled that Ms Roh was entitled, when dividing the couple’s assets, to a sum of money equivalent to one-third of the SK Group shares held by Mr Chey.
“The defendant’s interest appreciated substantially during the marriage,” she wrote in her ruling. “The plaintiff contributed to this increase through her work at home, childcare, and her public activities related to SK Group,” she said.
The couple said yes in 1988 in the Blue House, the presidential palace in Seoul where the bride’s father and head of state Roh Tae-woo officiated at the time, and had three children. But he had lived separately for around fifteen years and, in 2015, Mr. Chey admitted to having had a child out of wedlock.
At the heart of the dispute, which has been going from court to court since 2022, is the spectacular rise in the value of SK Group in recent years, fueled by the global boom in artificial intelligence of which SK hynix is a major player.
Since Mr. Chey admitted to his extramarital affair in 2015, SK Group stock has more than tripled.
“The Court took into account the sharp increase in the value of the defendant’s holdings to set the property sharing ratio,” indicates the judgment read on Friday, without further details.
Ms. Roh has already obtained alimony from her ex-husband, in separate proceedings, in the form of a one-off payment of two billion won ($1.92 million).
