The AI billionaire doubled his fortune. His ex-wife demanded half of it
South Korea's romantic wedding of the century exploded and turned into a drama with sequels. Now they are already being called the "divorce of the century".
Seoul, South Korea. A decade ago, Chey Tae-won, the billionaire who heads the successful memory chip maker SK Hynix, announced the dissolution of his marriage, which seemed like a fairy tale, to the daughter of a former South Korean president. He did so in a three-page letter he published in a local newspaper, in which he admitted that he was in love with another woman and that they had a child together.
In court documents cited in local media, he wrote that he did not believe his marriage, which lasted 27 years, could be saved, and even quoted the opening sentence of the novel "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy, a tragedy centered on a love triangle: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
The long legal battle over the divorce reached its peak on July 24, when a panel of judges at the appellate court decided how to divide Chey's fortune — estimated at about $5 billion — between him and his 65-year-old ex-wife, Roh Soh-yeong. The court ruled that Chey would pay his ex-wife 944 billion won, which is about $640 million, the highest divorce compensation ever awarded in South Korea.
The affair, which was dubbed in South Korea as the "divorce of the century," captivated the entire country. It is a story that seems as if it were taken from a Korean drama series — with money, romance, corruption, and betrayal. Its climax came just when it seemed that Chey, also 65, was enjoying life more than ever.
"My wife did not contribute to the success"
Last month, Chey and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sat down to drink whiskey at a fried chicken restaurant, with the enthusiasm characteristic of two billionaires at the height of the global artificial intelligence investment boom. Chey offered to pay the bill for all the diners in the crowded restaurant, and the crowd erupted in chants of "SK! SK!".
For Huang and Chey, whose company produces the memory chips that helped propel Nvidia and make it one of the largest companies in the world, there was certainly a reason to celebrate. SK Hynix stock has surged nearly tenfold since the beginning of 2025, helping to increase Chey's fortune, which has more than doubled.
Roh's opening demand in the divorce proceedings was to receive half of Chey's assets, most of which are held in shares of the SK conglomerate's holding company, the value of which has also surged recently. Chey and Roh refused to comment.
Chey, the nephew of the founder of the SK conglomerate who introduces himself in the West as Tony, posts photos of himself on Instagram to tens of thousands of followers, posing alongside Silicon Valley executives like Huang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. He also played golf at Mar-a-Lago before a meeting with President Trump last fall. Former President Joe Biden even called him a "friend" during his visit to South Korea in 2022.
Chey has also been convicted twice of white-collar crimes, was sent to prison, and subsequently received a pardon from two different South Korean presidents.
In 2022, Roh appealed the divorce court ruling that awarded her only about $50 million — a small fraction of Chey's fortune. According to her, the amount reflects "a denial of women's contribution to the household." Two other legal proceedings failed to bring the dispute to an end.
After that, Chey's ex-wife asked the appellate court to grant her a larger share of his fortune, which had grown following the global frenzy around artificial intelligence, based on an updated valuation of his assets. Chey argued that Roh had no contribution to SK's recent success and that the judges should have divided the property according to an earlier valuation, before the surge in the company's stock.
Family law attorneys in South Korea who are not involved in the case estimated that a ruling that would have increased the compensation to about $1 billion would have diluted Chey's holdings in SK and exposed him to greater pressure from activist investors or other external parties. Chey's legal team believed even before the hearing that the compensation would be much lower.
"Shameless presidential nepotism"
In 1988, South Korean newspapers dubbed it the wedding of the century. The ceremony was held at the Blue House, the official residence of the South Korean president, just months after Roh's father, Roh Tae-woo, took office as the country's first president after the collapse of the military regime.
In December 2015, the couple's "happily ever after" image shattered when Chey announced his intention to bring about a "clean end" to his marriage.
According to local media reports, in the hours after the humiliating public exposure, Roh told her friends that she wondered if she had been too selfish and had not considered his feelings enough. She also said she would fight for her family and do everything to keep it united. "I will not divorce him," she said then.
Chey and Roh met as graduate students at the University of Chicago, and the influential couple, who connected the political elite with the business elite, symbolized for many the new face of South Korea. That same year, the country hosted the 1988 Seoul Olympics and sought to leave behind decades of rigid military rule.
At the wedding ceremony, Roh wore a simple white wedding dress, while Chey arrived in an ivory-colored suit and a black tie. The chuppah was officiated by then-South Korean Prime Minister Lee Hyun-jae. "From today you are one flesh, and you must build a family that will be dedicated to the nation and its citizens," he told the two.
Later, a scandal arose around the business ties of the Roh government with SK. In 1992, the company won a license to operate the second mobile phone network in the country.
Kim Dae-jung, an opposition member who was later elected president of South Korea, called it "an act of shameless presidential nepotism" and "the peak of corruption and the illicit connection between capital and government." Members of Roh's party also expressed outrage.
Within a few days, SK returned the license. The conglomerate, which is now the largest communications player in South Korea, stated this month that the license was granted to it legally and based on its qualifications.
Roh Tae-woo, who passed away in 2011, was prosecuted in a series of criminal proceedings after serving as president between 1988 and 1993. In one of them, he was convicted of receiving illegal payments from the heads of South Korea's largest conglomerates and of establishing a secret fund for his personal use, in which hundreds of millions of dollars accumulated.
In documents submitted to the court as part of his daughter's divorce proceedings, evidence emerged that her father had allegedly transferred some of the funds in secret payments to SK. Roh Soh-yeong's lawyers submitted a handwritten note that they claimed was kept by her mother. It was unclear who wrote it, but next to the name Sunkyong, SK's former name, appeared the amount of 30 billion won, which is about $23 million.
Roh's lawyers argued that the funds were transferred to Chey's father and that the family controlling SK may have used them to expand the conglomerate's business. Chey's lawyers denied that SK received such payments.
In 2024, additional evidence convinced the appellate court to order Chey to transfer 35% of his assets to his ex-wife, which then amounted to nearly $1 billion. The Supreme Court confirmed the couple's divorce last year but left the decision on property division to a lower court. Separately, it ordered Chey to pay Roh compensation equivalent to about $1.4 million for the emotional distress he caused her.
Four years in prison for embezzlement
Chey himself also had criminal convictions. In 2003, he was sentenced to three years in prison for illegal trading and accounting fraud. He spent several months behind bars until he was released on bail, and subsequently, the court converted his sentence to a suspended sentence. Later, he received a presidential pardon.
In 2013, Chey returned to prison to serve a four-year sentence after being convicted of embezzling about $42 million from company funds. The money was used to finance private speculative investments intended to cover personal trading losses accumulated years earlier.
Chey denied the embezzlement charge and claimed that these were legitimate corporate investments. "I don't know what exactly I failed to prove," he said in court, "but I can honestly say that I did not commit this crime."
A South Korean judge criticized him and determined that he did not express a sincere position regarding his responsibility for his actions. Later, during the appeal hearing, Chey said that he had made a wrong decision and that he "deeply regrets everything."
During his prison term, Chey strengthened his control over the SK conglomerate's holding company through a merger between two of the group's subsidiaries. He also published a 229-page book titled "New Exploration, Social Enterprise," in which he detailed how governments can create incentives that encourage business companies to help solve social problems. In August 2015, he received another presidential pardon.
At the end of that year, he revealed his intention to divorce and leave his wife for a younger woman.
Sued the current partner for emotional distress
Chey's current partner, Kim Hee-young, 50, according to documents filed by the foundation she heads. Kim, who also uses the English name Chloe, published several photos of herself with her teenage daughter.
In 2018, the two established the T&C Foundation, a philanthropic organization operating in the fields of youth scholarships and educational programs. A year later, they appeared together for the first time at a public event, where Chey said he had come to the conclusion that he had been a cold businessman lacking any empathy.
"I looked back on my life," he said then, "and realized that I had lived it the wrong way."
A few months later, Roh agreed to divorce. "I think it might be right to allow my husband to go and find the happiness he so longs for," she wrote on social media. Later, she sued Kim for emotional distress and won compensation equivalent to about $1.5 million.
Roh manages the Nabi Center, the first media art museum in South Korea, which operated for years on one of the floors at the SK headquarters in central Seoul. Yee Won-kon, a professor emeritus of fine arts who accompanied her at the beginning of the center's journey, said that at first, he doubted the ability of a wealthy socialite, without formal training in media art theory, to succeed. Today, he says, he admits he was wrong.
SK's subsidiary, which manages the group's headquarters, accused Roh's art center in 2023 of holding space illegally, claiming that its lease had expired. Last June, Roh moved the art center to a new location near South Korea's historic royal palace. The opening exhibition, which presents kinetic art works, bears the name A Pregnant Pause.
Chey and Roh both attended their youngest daughter's wedding in October 2024. She walked to the chuppah alone. All three of their adult children previously worked at SK subsidiaries, but today only one of them is still employed by the group.
Raising more than $26 billion in an IPO
Chey and SK Hynix continue to enjoy an extraordinary period. The company's market value crossed the trillion-dollar mark at the end of May. Its latest plan to invest more than $250 billion in expanding chip production in South Korea received praise from the country's president, Lee Jae-myung, who called Chey and his counterpart from Samsung "heroes of the nation and the people."
On July 10, Chey rang the opening bell of the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York to mark the start of trading in SK Hynix shares in the US. The IPO raised more than $26 billion for the South Korean memory chip maker.
In a post she published on social media in November, Roh expressed longing as she prepared to leave the house where she had lived for 37 years and raised her family. "Now, after passing the age of 60, everything feels precious," she wrote.
She uploaded photos of her wedding dress, luxury bags, and other personal items. She wrote that more than anything, it pained her to look at a poster her three children had made when they were little. They cut out their parents' faces from photos and pasted them over paper cutouts of a wedding dress and a groom's suit.
The children decorated the poster with hearts and stars and also added a few short messages.
"True love," was written on one of them.
