Billionaire Hit with a $645 Million Bill After Leaving His Wife for a Younger Woman

The chairman who walked out on his wife of nearly 40 years is now ordered to hand her a record $645 million, after a court counted the SK Group empire she helped build as half hers.

He confessed the affair in a three-page letter to a newspaper, then admitted he’d fathered a child with the other woman. A decade of court fights later, the marriage that lasted nearly 40 years has a price tag.

Chey Tae-won and Roh Soh-yeong married in 1988 and had three children before he went public about his affair in 2015, in a three-page letter to a newspaper. Roh is the daughter of former South Korean President Roh Tae-woo. Chey, 65, is chairman of SK Group, one of the country’s largest conglomerates, with holdings in chipmaker SK Hynix and SK Telecom.

The Seoul High Court set the payout at 944 billion won in cash, roughly $645 million, in what South Korean media are calling the “divorce of the century” and what is now the largest divorce settlement in the country’s history. An earlier ruling had put the figure closer to $1 billion.

The reason the new number came in lower: the court locked the valuation to April 2024 prices, before the biggest run-up in SK Hynix, which supplies the high-bandwidth memory chips Nvidia uses in its AI systems and recently listed ADRs on Nasdaq. The court treated Chey’s 17.9% stake in SK Inc., the group’s holding company, as marital property, crediting Roh’s household, child-rearing, and public-facing work for the group. But it ordered him to pay in cash rather than shares, so his grip on SK Group is untouched. His fortune is currently estimated at $4.7 to $5.3 billion.

If he drags his feet after the ruling is finalized, 5% annual default interest kicks in, roughly 129 million won a day, or more than $90,000. Analysts expect him to cover the bill through share-backed loans, higher dividends from group companies like SK Telecom, and a possible sale of his personal 29.4% stake in unlisted wafer maker SK Siltron, which Doosan is already in talks to buy.

Roh has her own second act. She founded and runs Art Center Nabi, a pioneering media-art museum that spent more than two decades inside an SK Group building. After the divorce fight, a court ordered it out, and she relocated it in 2026.

Chey’s lawyers said he’s “deeply sorry” the proceedings “have caused concern to many people” and haven’t ruled out another appeal. The New York Post reports he’s still with the woman from the affair.

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