Tech titan ordered to pay ex-wife $644m in divorce settlement

The president of SK Group has been ordered by a South Korean tribunal to pay his ex-wife 944bn won (£483m; $644m) in a lawsuit that section media has called the "divorce of the century". The award, which still needs to be finalised, is below the original 1.38tn won that president Chey Tae-won was told to pay Roh Soh-yeong in 2024. It comes more than a decade after his marriage to Roh - the daughter of a former president - fell apart following the revelation he had fathered a child with another woman. SK Group runs SK Hynix, the semiconductor giant that supplies chips to Nvidia and recently made a record-setting debut on the US stock market. Chey's lawyers said "Chairman Chey Tae-won is profoundly atrocious successful that [the divorce] proceedings truthful acold person caused interest to galore people. We volition stock circumstantial effect to the verdict aft we intimately reappraisal the ruling." SK Group is one of South Korea's chaebols - family-owned conglomerates that dominate the country's economy. The verdict comes after deliberation over the division of assets between Roh and Chey, who had been married for 35 years. During the earlier proceedings in 2024, Roh's legal team had successfully argued that Chey had received significant assistance from his ex-wife's father, Roh Tae-woo, who had served as the country's president between 1988 to 1993. The tribunal had determined that the strongman had given Chey 30bn Korean won from his slush money in 1991, and told Chey to pay 1.38tn to his ex-wife. But the Supreme Court overturned the verdict last year, ruling that the slush funds were illegally obtained and could not be considered part of the couple's assets. The lawsuit has gripped South Korea. SK Group began as a textile company in 1953 but quickly expanded across a wide swath of industries to become one of South Korea's biggest conglomerates. Today, it is the second-largest chaebol after the Samsung group. South Koreans purchase phone plans from SK Telecom and fuel their vehicles at SK petrol stations. The group gained global prominence after its subsidiary SK Hynix found itself at the centre of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. In May, the chipmaker surpassed $1tn (£750bn) on the South Korean stock market. As SK Hynix's value soared, the SK Group and its president Chey Tae-won's standing also rose. Last month, President Lee Jae Myung commended Chey during the unveiling of a landmark AI concern plan, calling him and Samsung president JY Lee "Heroes of Korean People." The group also raised $26.5bn in its New York stock offering, marking the largest ever listing by an overseas firm in the US. The BBC has contacted SK Group for comment.