A Seoul court has ordered SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won to pay his ex-wife 944 billion won ($645 million), in the largest divorce award in South Korean history. And while the figure is a record, it was calculated against a stock price more than two years old - before it went ballistic in the AI boom.
Chey Tae-won, chairman of SK Group. Lee Young-hwan/Newsis/Associated PressThe Seoul High Court's First Family Division, presiding judge Lee Sang-ju, issued the ruling on Friday, nine years after Chey filed for divorce mediation in 2017. The court ordered the money paid in cash with 5 percent annual interest from the day after the judgment becomes final, and declined to hand over any stock, citing the role Chey's shares play in his control of the group, according to the WSJ. Neither side has said whether it will appeal again.
Chey did not attend. He was in California, accompanying President Lee Jae-myung on a San Francisco trip and dining with Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang in Woodside.
The Two-Year-Old Price
The court fixed the valuation at April 16, 2024, the date arguments closed in the earlier appeal. SK Inc. finished that session at 160,000 won ($110) a share, putting Chey's 17.9 percent stake at roughly 2.07 trillion won ($1.4 billion). When arguments closed in the remand trial on June 26, 2026, the stock closed at 810,000 won ($555). Five times higher thanks to an AI boom that runs from Nvidia's high-bandwidth memory orders
