A Seoul appellate court ruled on Friday, July 24, 2026, that SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won must pay 944 billion South Korean won to his former wife, Roh Soh-yeong, in the latest judgment of a divorce dispute that has wound through South Korea's court system for over two years. The award translates to approximately $640 million USD, according to Reuters, or roughly $644 million USD as reported by the Korea Herald and the Straits Times. The Straits Times also placed the sum at S$831 million in Singapore dollars.

The ruling reduced the payout from a prior judgment, according to the Straits Times. The case has traveled a lengthy procedural path. On May 30, 2024, a South Korean court ordered Chey to pay more than $1 billion to Roh as part of their divorce. That judgment was subsequently reviewed by the Supreme Court, which on or about October 16, 2025, partially overturned the ruling and remanded the case — sent it back — to a lower court for recalculation. The Supreme Court also ordered Chey to pay 2 billion won in alimony to Roh as part of the proceedings, as Reuters reported. Following the remand, a Seoul appeals court resumed hearings in June 2026, culminating in the July 24 judgment.

The trajectory from the original May 2024 award of over $1 billion down to the current 944 billion won figure reflects the Supreme Court's intervention. By partially overturning the earlier ruling and sending the case back, the apex court required the lower court to recalculate the division of marital assets, resulting in a reduced though still substantial obligation for Chey. The 2 billion won alimony component ordered by the Supreme Court sits alongside the appellate court's property-division award.

Chey Tae-won serves as chairman of SK Group, one of South Korea's largest chaebol — family-controlled conglomerates that dominate the country's economy. The size of the judgment, even after reduction, draws attention to the governance and succession questions that attend any major restructuring of a controlling shareholder's personal wealth in a system where ownership chains, cross-shareholdings, and family control are tightly intertwined.

The broader context here is the intersection of family law and corporate governance in jurisdictions where concentrated family ownership remains the dominant structure for large industrial groups. A divorce settlement of this magnitude can reshape the equity stakes that underpin a chaebol's control architecture. While the verified facts do not detail the specific SK Inc. shareholdings or cross-holding structures at issue, the figure of 944 billion won, whether denominated in the $640 million or $644 million range depending on the exchange rate applied, constitutes a material transfer of wealth that could affect Chey's capacity to maintain his ownership position within the group.

The case also illustrates how South Korea's judicial hierarchy handles high-value matrimonial disputes. The Supreme Court's decision to partially overturn rather than fully affirm or reverse the original 2024 ruling signaled that the earlier court's methodology for valuing and dividing the marital estate required correction. The appellate court's resumed hearings in June 2026 were the procedural mechanism for implementing that correction, and the July 24 ruling is the result.

How Chey and SK Group's leadership respond to the ruling, including whether the judgment is appealed to the Supreme Court for a second time or accepted as final, will determine the stability of the group's governance structure going forward. The procedural history, with its multiple layers of review, suggests that either party may seek further judicial scrutiny before the matter is fully resolved.

The currency-conversion discrepancy between Reuters' $640 million figure and the Korea Herald and Straits Times' $644 million figure reflects the volatility of the won-dollar exchange rate and the timing of each outlet's conversion. Both figures correspond to the same 944 billion won principal awarded by the court.