SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won will start selling about 944 billion won ($700 million) of shares in SK Inc. on November 2. The number is not random. It matches, down to the won, the cash a Seoul court ordered him to pay his ex-wife, Roh Soh-yeong, in July. That award makes the Chey Tae-won divorce the most expensive in Korean history. But the most interesting part of the story is not the amount. It is a date.
Two dates, two very different fortunes
Chey owns about 13 million SK Inc. shares. On April 16, 2024, SK closed at 160,600 won. At that price, his stake was worth about 2.07 trillion won.
On June 26, 2026, when the latest round of hearings ended, the stock was trading around 800,000 won. The same shares were now worth roughly 11 trillion won.
Why the jump? SK Inc. is a holding company. It sits at the top of a chain of companies that ends at SK Hynix, one of the world’s key makers of memory chips for AI. When AI demand took off, SK Hynix soared, and the whole chain rose with it. (I wrote earlier about how SK Hynix moved to build in the US before tariff rules even existed.)
So the big question in court was simple: which day’s price do we use? Roh’s side wanted the newer, higher price. Chey’s side wanted April 2024. The court chose April 2024.
Why the court stopped the clock
Korea’s Supreme Court has a rule for cases like this. When a couple splits property after the divorce itself is final, the court values everything on the day the fact-finding hearings in the divorce case ended. For this couple, that day was April 16, 2024.
The judges added a second reason. Much of the later rise, they said, came from Chey’s own work running the group, not from anything the marriage built.
But they did not ignore the rally completely. The court said it considered the sharp rise when it set Roh’s share at one-third. That is only a little below the 35% an earlier court had given her. In other words, the clock was frozen, but the court nudged the percentage to keep things fair.
That earlier ruling, in 2024, had ordered 1.38 trillion won. Part of its reasoning was that Roh’s father, former President Roh Tae-woo, allegedly sent a 30 billion won slush fund to the SK group in the 1990s. In October 2025, the Supreme Court rejected that idea: illegal money cannot count as a wife’s contribution to the family fortune. It sent the property question back to the lower court, which came back with 944 billion won.
Here is the scale in plain terms. One-third of a stake valued at 2 trillion won is a very different check from one-third of a stake valued at 11 trillion won.
How he is raising the cash
According to SK’s October 2 filing, the sale has two parts.
- About 544 billion won of shares go to a strategic investor at 559,387 won per share. SK has not named the buyer.
- About 400 billion won (681,431 shares at 587,000 won) goes to Korea Investment & Securities through a three-year price return swap, or PRS.
The PRS is the clever part. Imagine selling your car to a friend but keeping a side bet on what it will be worth later. The brokerage pays Chey cash now and holds the shares. In three years, they settle up. If SK trades above 587,000 won, Chey keeps the gain. If it trades below, Chey pays the loss. The brokerage just earns a fee for holding the shares.
Why not simply borrow against the stock? A share-backed loan can trigger a margin call: if the price falls, the lender demands more collateral right away. A PRS settles only once, at the end. No surprise calls in between.
So Chey gets the cash today but keeps the upside on 400 billion won of stock. That is a quiet bet that the AI rally behind SK Hynix still has room to run.
What changes, and what doesn’t
After the sale, Chey’s personal stake falls from about 18% to 15.5%. Including family and affiliates, the combined stake stays at 22.9%. He remains SK Inc.’s largest shareholder, and the chain from SK Inc. down to SK Hynix stays in place.
The legal fight is also smaller now. Chey appealed in August, then narrowed his appeal: he accepted 700 billion won and is contesting only the remaining 244 billion won at the Supreme Court. Once the award is final, it also carries 5% annual interest until paid.
The couple married in 1988 at the presidential residence, while the bride’s father was in office. Chey revealed an affair and a child outside the marriage in 2015 and filed for divorce mediation in 2017. Nine years of court fights later, the Chey Tae-won divorce comes down to one choice on a calendar, and a stock sale timed to the exact won.
My take: He lost the case and won the calendar.
Not advice. Just how I see it.