SK Group Chairman Ordered to Pay Huge Sum in Divorce Case

TapTechNews May 30th news, the chairman of SK Inc., one of the largest chaebols in South Korea, Chey Tae-won, was ordered by the court to pay 1.38 trillion Korean won (TapTechNews note: currently about 7.314 billion Chinese yuan) to his wife Roh Soh-yeong due to a divorce case. As soon as the news came out, the share price of the SK Group once soared by 16%.

Previously, according to local Korean media reports, Roh had demanded about 2 trillion Korean won and a portion of Chey's shares in the SK Group. The final judgment amount was lower than expected, which may explain why the share price of the SK Group rose so significantly. By the close of the day, the share price of the SK Group still rose by more than 9%.

The SK Group is one of the largest technology groups in South Korea, and owns the world-renowned memory chip manufacturer SK Hynix and the mobile telecommunications operator SK Telecom. This divorce turmoil began in 2015, when Chey Tae-won admitted to having an extramarital child, and then he filed a divorce lawsuit against Roh Soh-yeong in 2017.

In this long-running legal lawsuit, Roh's lawyer argued that her late father, former South Korean president Roh Tae-woo, provided funds to Chey in the 1990s for the development of the business of the SK Group, while Chey's lawyer team denied this statement.