Expensive billionaire divorces: Korean tycoon Chey retains SK Group and has to pay greater than $50 million in alimony

Chey, 62, will retain 17.5 percent of SK. He was worth $2.6 billion as of Monday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Chey met Roh, daughter of former President Roh Tae-woo, while he was a student at the University of Chicago. They married in 1988 and had a son and two daughters together.

In 2015, Chey announced that he had a child with another woman, and two years later he filed for a court-broken divorce settlement. With the pair unable to reach an agreement, the case went back to court, and in 2019 Roh filed a lawsuit demanding 42.3 percent of Chey’s stake in SK. She also asked for child support of 300 million won.

Chey has led SK Group since the death of his father Chey Jong-hyon, the late founder’s brother, in 1998. Under him, SK Group overtook Hyundai Motor Group to become the country’s second-largest conglomerate, according to data from the Korea Fair Trade Commission worth 292 trillion won this year, just behind Samsung Group. Chey also ventured into new areas and in 2012 acquired Hynix Semiconductor, the memory chip maker that is now SK Hynix Inc., a $45 billion market behemoth.

At its peak in 2017, Chey’s net worth was over $5.1 billion. In 2014 he was South Korea’s fourth richest person.

SmileGate Holdings’ Kwon Hyuk-bin, whose net worth is estimated at $5.4 billion, is also facing a costly split. His wife petitioned the court last month to bar Kwon from selling his shares in the gaming company until a divorce is finalized.

While Chey’s breakup won’t change the net worth rankings, a few high-profile breakups recently have. MacKenzie Scott, worth $21 billion, became one of the richest women in the world — and one of the most prolific philanthropists — after divorcing Amazon.com Inc.’s Jeff Bezos in 2019. Melinda French Gates is now worth $11.2 billion after splitting with Bill Gates last year.