By Stephanie Yang, Yoonjung Seo, NCS
Seoul (NCS) — The AI gold rush is minting new fortunes, however the ex-wife of one of South Korea’s greatest tech titans has failed to win a greater share of his wealth as his firm’s inventory worth has soared.
In one other twist in the lengthy-working divorce case that’s captivated the nation, billionaire SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won was ordered on Friday to pay his former spouse 944 billion received ($644 million) – properly beneath the quantity she sought.
Chey, who additionally chairs reminiscence chip large SK Hynix, break up from his spouse Roh Soh-yeong, the daughter of former South Korean President Roh Tae-woo, greater than 10 years in the past, when he took the extraordinary step of saying their marriage was over through a letter to South Korean media.
Since then, she’s fought for an even bigger slice of his fortune, arguing in a number of courtroom circumstances that her father contributed to the firm’s progress with an early funding – and that her payout must be based mostly on the 2026 valuation of Chey’s SK Group.
Roh’s evaluation would have meant a payout of billions of {dollars}, inflated by an AI boom that’s boosted demand for the reminiscence chips made by SK Hynix, a subsidiary of SK Group. But the Seoul High Court dominated that the shares must be valued at the date that the appellate courtroom concluded its listening to in 2024, earlier than AI drove costs up fivefold.
The remaining resolution was even lower than the earlier 2024 ruling, which might have granted Roh about $1 billion in division of property. In October, the Supreme Court overturned the valuation, ruling that Roh’s father’s monetary contribution shouldn’t be taken under consideration.
In its ruling, the courtroom mentioned the $644 million award was based mostly on an asset division ratio below which Roh receives one-third and Chey retains two-thirds, and that its judgment was in line with the Supreme Court ruling.
‘Wedding of the century’
When Chey and Roh married in 1988 at the Blue House, the govt workplace of the president, it was hailed as the “wedding of the century.”
But in 2015, Chey confessed in a public letter to having a toddler with one other girl. In the bitter break up, they each filed divorce proceedings, and she demanded alimony cost of 300 million received, or about $260,000, in addition to 42.29% of Chey’s SK Group inventory holdings. The contentious battle that adopted has now change into often known as the “divorce of the century.”
In 2024, a excessive courtroom dominated that Chey pay Roh 2 billion received, or $1.5 million, together with 1.38 trillion received in division of property, or about $1 billion. However, the evaluation of property has come into query since then.
In October, the Supreme Court overturned the $1 billion resolution, ruling that the cash that Roh’s father allegedly gave Chey’s father was illegally obtained.
Before Friday’s ruling, Chey had argued that the division of property must be calculated at the shut of the case listening to in April 2024. Roh had requested for the property to be valued based mostly on a unique date in the divorce proceedings in 2026, then price considerably extra.
The AI impact
When Chey publicly declared his marriage was over in 2015, shares of SK Hynix, a subsidiary below SK Group, had been buying and selling at about 33,000 received, or about $30.
Since then, SK Hynix has grown to change into one of the world’s Most worthy corporations.
The reminiscence chipmaker reached a $1 trillion valuation in May, as a surge of funding in synthetic intelligence boosted demand for semiconductors wanted to run huge new information facilities. Earlier this month, SK Hynix raised $26.5 billion in the largest-ever US itemizing by a international firm. On Thursday, its US-traded shares closed at $169.50.
The AI boom has turned what was as soon as a sluggish however regular enterprise into one of the world’s hottest tech trades, bolstering wealth for traders and staff of SK Hynix and its rival Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest reminiscence chipmaker.
That has additionally launched Chey right into a excessive-profile cabal of tech executives prominently featured on his Instagram below the deal with papatonybear. Earlier this 12 months, Chey posted photographs and movies of himself with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, all signing a forged on Chey’s arm.
The-NCS-Wire
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