She Won Korea's Biggest Divorce. The AI Boom Still Left Her Behind

What does the plunge in the share price of SK Hynix, South Korea's second-biggest chipmaker, have to do with a former president's daughter and a billionaire's love child? Divorce.

A Seoul court has closed the book on what Korean media dubbed the "divorce of the century", ordering 65-year-old SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won to pay his ex-wife, Roh Soh-yeong, (also 65-years-old), 944 billion won or approximately $645 million. It is the largest divorce settlement in Korean history, though far less than half the marital assets Roh was seeking.

That same week, SK Group's chip arm Hynix missed earnings expectations and the stock cratered, dragging the Kospi into a record two-day fall. Hynix is a major supplier of AI chips to NVIDIA and drives upwards of 44% of SK’s group-wide revenues. Hynix wasn’t alone in the dramatic fall. Markets worldwide have been spooked by the progress of China's chip-making equipment, with AI stocks hit hardest.

It was not a great week for Chey. It was a different tale for his ex-wife. Except, she missed her slice of the AI pie and therein lies the irony.

Roh’s payout was pegged to the valuation of SK Group shares as of April 2024. Those shares have since quintupled, mostly on the global AI boom. Chey's own fortune and that of the SK Group, meanwhile, was built partly on 30 billion won from the slush fund of his former father-in-law, the disgraced ex-president Roh Tae-woo. That fund, the Supreme Court ruled in October 2025, likely came from illegal bribes and could not be counted as Roh’s contribution to the couple’s wealth.

Today SK Group holds total assets estimated at over 360 trillion won (approximately $250 billion), of which Hynix accounts for roughly 35%. Hynix has increased Chey's official personal net worth from $1 billion in 2024 to more than $5 billion in 2026. Roh's payout, fixed to the earlier date, captured none of that climb.

The basis of Roh’s 2026 payout ruling may be contentious. But after ten years of courtroom K-drama, the founder and director of Art Centre Nabi does walk away with a large chunk of assets belonging to the chairman of South Korea’s second-biggest chaebol (a large, family-owned business group) after Samsung.

Divorce is hard. It’s even harder when your husband fathers a child with another woman, announces he is leaving you in a three-page letter published in a newspaper, and does so in a culturally conservative country where you happen to be the former first daughter. The daughter of a president convicted over his role in a military coup and for corruption. And one that gave your ex-husband the political cover he needed to grow.

But divorce isn't over till it's over. The July 2026 decision came from the Seoul High Court, a retrial ordered after the Supreme Court overturned the original 2024 award and sent it back to be recalculated. Either side could still appeal again to the Supreme Court, continuing the saga, though that court reviews only points of law and does not re-examine facts.

Chey's legal team says it will decide whether to appeal after reviewing the ruling in detail. Roh's side has said nothing.

What happened between Roh Soh-yeong and Chey Tae-won?

Their 1988 wedding was described as a "fairytale". Three children followed, and so did SK Group's climb to become South Korea's second-biggest conglomerate.

The marriage supplied much of the political cover for that growth. Founded in 1953 as a textile company after the Korean War, SK had transformed by the 1980s into a major energy and petrochemical player. The wedding, per various South Korean court findings, helped lift SK into the top tier chaebols and into telecommunications, thanks to Roh's father, Roh Tae-woo. His political career collapsed in 1995 when he was found guilty of illegally amassing hundreds of millions of dollars in secret political donations during his presidency.

Chey's own record is chequered. In 2008 he received a suspended sentence for internal transaction irregularities, then a presidential pardon. In 2013 he was found guilty of embezzling 49.7 billion won (around $45 million at the time of indictment) from SK Telecom and other SK affiliates for stock investment. In 2014 he was sent to prison for four years and held near Seoul until his pardon in August 2015.

That December, Chey published a three-page newspaper letter declaring his marriage beyond repair and announcing he wanted a “clean end”. It then emerged that he had fathered a child with his now long-term partner, Kim Hee-young, also known as Chloe.

So began a ten-year fight, labelled South Korea's "divorce of the century". The country’s fault-based divorce system with no statutory alimony put the onus on the party initiating the split to work out what they are owed and prove it in court. Convenient for the man in this case.

Roh resisted the divorce at first, and Chey's mediation attempts failed. In 2019 she finally agreed to divorce and filed a countersuit seeking property division. Her father died in 2021, and in 2022 she was awarded just 1.2% of marital assets. She rejected that award, filing a counterclaim for half the marital assets, alongside a separate 3 billion won ($2 million) damages suit against Kim Hee-young, which she won.

A 2024 award of 1.38 trillion won (about $1 billion) was contested by Chey, leading to the 2026 ruling that cut it to 944 billion won ($645 million), roughly a third of Chey's assets. The divorce itself and a separate 2 billion won alimony award were finalised by the Supreme Court last year. SK Group shares aren't part of the property division, leaving control right where he wants it.

In a country whose own K-dramas fixate on marriage among the chaebols and the political elite, this real-life courtroom saga has laid bare presidential slush funds, financial irregularities and political influence. It also laid bare the bias still within the country’s divorce laws.