SOUTH KOREAN TECH BILLIONAIRE, CHEY TAE-WON, FACES POTENTIAL $1 BILLION DIVORCE PAYOUT AFTER ADMITTING TO AFFAIR AND FATHERING A CHILD OUTSIDE MARRIAGE

South Korean tech billionaire and SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won could be ordered to pay his ex-wife nearly $1 billion as the country’s widely dubbed “divorce of the century” approaches a decisive court ruling.

Chey, 65, shocked South Korea in 2015 when he publicly admitted in a three-page newspaper letter that he was in love with another woman and had fathered a child with her, declaring that his marriage was beyond repair and that he wanted a “clean end.”

His former wife, Roh Soh-yeong, daughter of late South Korean President Roh Tae-woo, is seeking half of Chey’s fortune. She has urged the court to value his assets at current market prices, following a surge in the value of SK Hynix, the memory-chip maker supplying Nvidia’s AI systems.

The company’s shares have soared roughly tenfold since the beginning of 2025, helping more than double Chey’s estimated fortune to about $5 billion and significantly increasing the potential divorce settlement.

The legal battle has captivated South Korea, combining a high-profile affair, political family ties, allegations of secret funding behind the SK business empire and a fight over one of the country’s largest conglomerates.

In announcing the collapse of his marriage, Chey quoted the opening line of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Roh previously won about $1.5 million in d@mages after a court ruled that Chey’s affair and child outside the marriage caused her emotional distress and d+stroyed the couple’s trust.

An appeals court had earlier awarded Roh 35% of Chey’s assets, but South Korea’s Supreme Court upheld the divorce while ordering a fresh hearing on the property settlement after rejecting part of the legal basis for the valuation.

The key issue before the court is whether Chey’s wealth should be calculated using its value before the AI boom or at today’s much higher valuation.