SEOUL — Chey Tae-won, the chairman of SK Group, has spent years fighting two battles at once: one to keep his conglomerate atop South Korea’s corporate order, the other to settle a divorce that has dragged through the courts since 2017. On Friday he escalated the second, filing an appeal with the Seoul High Court that asks the Supreme Court to review the property split ordered in his case.
The lower court ruled Chey must pay his former wife, Roh Soh-young, 944 billion won in property division, one of the largest awards of its kind in South Korean history. If the judgment stands, Chey would also owe delay interest at 5 percent annually — roughly 47.2 billion won a year on top of the principal — for as long as payment is withheld.
Chey’s legal team said in a statement that the decision to appeal came after weighing multiple factors, and that the chairman would work to minimize any impact the litigation has on shareholders and on the group’s operations. The case will now wind its way toward the Supreme Court, where a final ruling could take a year or more.
The dispute has become a fixture of South Korean business news since it began, pitting the chairman of the country’s second-largest chaebol against the daughter of late president Roh Tae-woo, whom he married in 1988. The couple separated in 2017 and divorced two years later, but the financial terms have been litigated ever since, moving through district and appellate courts as both sides pressed for larger or smaller settlements.
What makes the case delicate for SK is the money involved and the machinery behind it. Chey controls the group through a web of cross-shareholdings anchored by SK Inc., the holding company, and SK Square. Analysts said a large cash settlement could force the chairman to sell or pledge shares, potentially unsettling the control structure at a moment when the group’s most valuable unit, SK Hynix, is riding a memory-chip boom driven by demand for AI hardware.
“Every won of this settlement is a governance question for SK,” said one analyst who tracks the group. “The market is not worried about Chey’s personal wealth. It is worried about whether the chairman has to disturb the shareholding structure to pay.”
SK Hynix’s high-bandwidth memory products have made it one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI buildout, and the group’s semiconductor profits have reached record levels. That success raises the stakes of any disruption: a prolonged legal fight, governance experts said, could distract management and hand an opening to rivals at a moment when memory pricing is the industry’s dominant theme.
Chey’s appeal is the latest turn in a saga that has also touched the group’s boardroom. The chairman’s relationship with the late chairman Chey Jong-hyun, his father and the group’s founder, and the succession arrangements put in place before his death in 1998, have been scrutinized for years. The divorce case has repeatedly surfaced in that scrutiny, with shareholders questioning whether personal liabilities could bleed into the group’s balance sheet.
The company has moved to contain the damage. SK Group officials have emphasized that the settlement is a personal obligation of the chairman and is not guaranteed or backed by group companies. Regulators in Seoul have not signaled any action. Still, the sheer size of the award — equal to roughly 4 percent of SK Inc.’s market value at recent prices — makes it hard for investors to ignore.
Lawyers close to the case say the Supreme Court review will focus on procedural questions and on whether the appellate court correctly valued the assets in dispute, including stakes in group affiliates that changed hands during the marriage. Roh’s legal team has argued that Chey’s control premium in SK’s holding structure should be counted as marital property; Chey’s side has argued the assets were built before or outside the marriage.
The delay interest provision adds pressure of its own. At 5 percent, the accrual on 944 billion won approaches 130 million won a day, a clock that keeps running even as the appeal proceeds. For both sides, time is money in a very literal sense.
Analysts said the market’s reaction to Friday’s filing was muted, a sign that investors have largely priced in a long legal runway. SK Inc. shares moved little in afternoon trading. The bigger question, they said, is what happens if the Supreme Court upholds the award: whether Chey can raise the cash without selling the shares that underpin his control.
For Chey, the appeal is a calculated bet. His team said it considered the impact on shareholders and operations before filing, a pointed acknowledgment that the case is no longer just a private matter. It is now a corporate governance issue with a daily interest meter attached, and the Supreme Court’s docket will decide how long it keeps running.
