This AI Tech Billionaire Just Doubled His Net Worth. His Ex Asked for Half.
South Korea’s romanticized ‘marriage of the century’ blew up in a real-life serial drama everybody is calling the ‘divorce of the century’
SEOUL—Chey Tae-won, the billionaire atop blockbuster memory chip maker SK Hynix, announced the breakup of his fairy tale marriage to the daughter of a past president in a three-page letter to a South Korean newspaper a decade ago.
In the letter, Chey acknowledged he loved another woman and had a child with her. In court papers cited by local media, he said he didn’t believe his 27-year marriage could be saved and quoted the opening of Leo Tolstoy’s novel “Anna Karenina,” a tragedy that plots its own love triangle: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
The yearslong divorce battle nears a climax Friday, when a panel of appeals court judges is scheduled to decide how to divide Chey’s roughly $5 billion fortune with his 65-year-old ex-wife, Roh Soh-yeong.
The case, known here as the divorce of the century, has mesmerized South Koreans—a real-life K-drama of money, romance, corruption and betrayal. Its expected finale comes as Chey, also 65, is seemingly having the time of his life.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Chey quaffed whiskey at a fried chicken restaurant last month with the gusto of two billionaires at the pinnacle of the world’s AI investment bonanza. Chey offered to pay everybody’s tab at the packed restaurant, and the crowd shouted “SK! SK!”
Huang and Chey, whose company makes the memory chips that helped fuel Nvidia’s rise to become one of the world’s biggest companies, had plenty to celebrate. SK Hynix’s stock jumped roughly 10-fold since the start of 2025, helping more than double Chey’s net worth.
The opening settlement demand by Roh: half of Chey’s assets, which are mostly held in stock of the SK conglomerate’s holding company that also has recently ballooned in value. Chey and Roh declined to comment.
Chey, a nephew of the SK conglomerate’s founder, posts Instagram photos of himself to tens of thousands of followers, posing with Silicon Valley chief executives such as Huang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Chey, who goes by “Tony” in the West, played golf at Mar-a-Lago before a meeting with President Trump last fall. Joe Biden had called him a pal during a 2022 visit.
Chey also has twice been convicted, imprisoned—and later pardoned by two South Korean presidents—for white-collar crimes.
Roh appealed a roughly $50 million divorce judgment in 2022, which would have been a fraction of Chey’s assets. She called the sum a “denial of women’s commitment to the household.” Two subsequent trials failed to resolve the dispute.
Chey’s ex-wife now wants an appeals court to grant her a higher proportion of Chey’s fortune, fattened by the global AI frenzy, using an updated asset valuation. Chey has argued that Roh played no role in SK’s recent success and that judges should base the divvy on an earlier measure—before his company’s stock boom.
The ruling could push Roh’s settlement to as much as $1 billion, said South Korean divorce attorneys not involved in the case. A payout of that size would dilute Chey’s ownership grip on SK, exposing him to greater risk with activist investors or other outside pressure. Chey’s legal team believes the figure could be much lower.
South Korean newspapers declared their 1988 nuptials as “the wedding of the century.” The ceremony was held at the presidential Blue House just months after Roh’s father, Roh Tae-woo, became South Korea’s first president after the collapse of the country’s military dictatorship.
In December 2015, the couple’s happily-ever-after image shattered with the publication of Chey’s intention to seek a “clean end” with his wife.
In the hours after the humiliating public disclosure, Roh told friends she wondered whether she had been too selfish and inconsiderate of her husband’s emotions, according to local media reports. She also said she would defend her household and keep the family together.
“I will not divorce him,” she said at the time.
Behind bars
Chey and Roh had met as graduate students at the University of Chicago, and the powerhouse pairing—a marriage of political and business elites—embodied a fresh image for South Korea. The country had hosted the 1988 Summer Olympics and sought to put its decades of brutal military rule behind it.
At the ceremony, Roh wore a simple white wedding dress. Chey paired an ivory suit with a black tie. The country’s then-Prime Minister Lee Hyun-jae officiated. “The two of you now, as one flesh, should create a family that devotes itself to the nation and its people,” Lee told them.
Scandal later emerged involving the Roh administration’s dealmaking with SK. In 1992, SK was awarded a license to operate the country’s second mobile-phone network.
Kim Dae-jung, an opposition lawmaker who later became president, called it a “shameless act of presidential nepotism” and the “absolute climax of corrupt, political-business collusion.” Members of Roh’s party also voiced outrage.
Within days, SK returned the license. The conglomerate, which is now South Korea’s largest telecommunications player, said this month the license was granted lawfully and based on merit.
Roh Tae-woo, who died in 2021, faced various criminal charges after serving as president from 1988 to 1993. In one case, he was convicted of taking illegal payments from the heads of South Korea’s biggest conglomerates and creating a personal slush fund totaling hundreds of millions of dollars.
Evidence surfaced in court documents submitted in Roh’s divorce that her father had allegedly spent some of the money on clandestine payments to SK. Roh Soh-yeong’s lawyers submitted a handwritten note that Roh’s mother had apparently saved. It wasn’t clear who wrote it, but it showed Sunkyong—SK’s prior name—written alongside “30 billion won,” roughly $23 million.
Roh’s lawyers said the payments were made to Chey’s father, alleging it was money the ruling SK family might have used to expand the conglomerate’s businesses. Chey’s lawyers have denied that SK received such payments.
The note and other evidence persuaded an appeals court in 2024 to order Chey to give his ex-wife 35% of his assets, amounting to nearly $1 billion at the time. The supreme court last year confirmed the couple’s divorce, but left the divorce settlement for a lower court to decide. Separately, the court ordered Chey to pay Roh the equivalent of $1.4 million for the emotional distress he caused.
Chey also had criminal convictions. He was sentenced in 2003 to three years in prison for illegal trading and accounting fraud. He spent months behind bars until being released on bail. A court granted him a suspended sentence. Later, a presidential pardon wiped his record clean.
In 2013, Chey returned to prison to serve a four-year sentence for embezzling roughly $42 million in company funds. The money funded speculative personal investments that were used to help cover personal trading losses accrued years earlier.
Chey denied the embezzlement allegation, saying the transactions were legitimate corporate investments. “I don’t know what it is that 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 Chey for failing to express a sincere view about his responsibility. Chey later said, during the appeals trial, that he had made a wrong decision and “deeply regretted everything.”
While behind bars, Chey cemented his power over SK’s controlling company through the merger of two SK affiliates. He also published a 229-page book, titled “New Exploration, Social Enterprise,” detailing how governments can create incentives for companies to help solve social problems. He received a second presidential pardon in August 2015.
He ended the year revealing his plans for divorce, leaving his wife for a younger woman.
Emotional distress
Chey’s partner, Kim Hee-young, is 50 years old, according to corporate filings for a foundation she leads. Kim, who uses the English name Chloe, has posted several photos with her teenage daughter.
The two established the T&C Foundation in 2018, a charitable group involved in youth scholarships and educational programs. They officially appeared together at an event the following year, where Chey said he had come to see himself as a coldhearted businessman with zero sympathy.
“I reflected on my past,” he said at the time, “and realized that I had lived my life wrongly.”
Roh finally agreed to a divorce months later. “I think it might be right to let my husband go find the ‘happiness’ he so desperately wants,” she said in a social-media post. She later sued Kim for emotional distress, winning a $1.5 million payout.
Roh operates the Art Center Nabi, South Korea’s first media-art museum, which had occupied a floor of SK’s downtown headquarters. Yi Won-kon, a professor emeritus of fine arts who advised Roh in the center’s early days, said he had initially doubted a wealthy socialite without formal training in media-art theory could succeed. He now acknowledges he was wrong.
The SK affiliate managing the company headquarters accused Roh’s art center of illegally occupying the space in 2023, citing a lapsed rental contract. In June, Roh moved the art center near South Korea’s former royal palace. The debut exhibit, featuring kinetic artwork, is titled, “A Pregnant Pause.”
Chey and Roh both attended their youngest daughter’s wedding in October 2024. Their daughter walked down the aisle alone. All three of their adult children have worked at SK subsidiaries. Only one does now.
Chey and SK Hynix remain on an epic streak. The company’s market value surpassed $1 trillion in late May. A recent plan for SK Hynix to invest more than $250 billion in chipmaking production in South Korea drew praise from President Lee Jae Myung, who referred to Chey and his counterpart at Samsung as “heroes of the nation and the people.”
On July 10, Chey rang the bell at New York’s Nasdaq to celebrate SK Hynix’s U.S. trading debut. The listing generated more than $26 billion for the Korean memory-chip company.
In a November social-media post, Roh expressed nostalgia as she prepared to leave the home where she had raised a family and lived for 37 years. “Now that I am over 60, everything feels precious,” she said.
Roh uploaded photos of her wedding dress, luxury handbags and other possessions. She wrote that her heart ached most looking at a poster her three children made when they were young. They affixed headshot cutouts of their parents from photos and placed them above paper cutouts of a wedding dress and a tuxedo.
The children decorated the poster with hearts and stars. They also left short messages.
“True love,” one said.
