The chairman of South Korea’s second-largest chaebol, SK Group, Choi Tae-won, will today recalculate a divorce settlement worth nearly $1 billion.

In 2024, the appellate court in the second instance ordered him to pay his ex-wife, Ryu So-young, a property division settlement of 1.3808 trillion won, plus an additional 2 billion won in damages.
The Supreme Court later upheld the 2 billion won in damages but required the property division amount to be recalculated.
The issue lies in a sum of 30 billion won. The second-instance court held that the money came from Ryu So-young’s father, former President Roh Tae-woo, who helped SK Group’s development, and therefore it should also be counted as Ryu’s contribution to marital property. The Supreme Court, however, determined that the money originated illegally and therefore cannot be included.
Under this logic, the amount Ryu So-young can receive may decrease. But after the case was remanded for retrial, SK’s stock price rose.
At the end of the second-instance proceedings in 2024, Choi Tae-won held SK shares worth about 2.07 trillion won; based on this year’s May share price, the value has already risen to about 6.53 trillion won.
So today, the court is effectively calculating two things:
After removing that 30 billion won contribution, how much Ryu So-young can still receive;
For these SK shares, whether to value them at 2.07 trillion won or at the post-rise price.
One basis for division was removed, yet the assets increased by more than 4 hundred billion won. This divorce dragged on for 9 years, and in the end it caught the AI bull-market settlement—making time the most expensive part.