The Wedding of the Century Just Became the Divorce of the Century, and Even $640 Million Might Not Be Enough

In 1988, Chey Tae-won married Roh So-yeong at the Blue House, the official residence of South Korea's president, her father, in a ceremony the country's press called the wedding of the century. On Friday, a Seoul court closed the same marriage with an order South Korean media has spent nearly a decade calling by its natural counterpart: the divorce of the century. Chey, chairman of the SK Group and its semiconductor arm SK Hynix, has been ordered to pay Roh 944 billion won, roughly $640 million.

A number that has already changed twice

The figure itself has moved considerably since the case first reached a courtroom. A first ruling awarded Roh only 66.5 billion won, about $50 million, and explicitly rejected her claim to any direct stake in SK's holding company. On appeal, the Seoul High Court raised that figure dramatically, to 1.38 trillion won, close to $1 billion, a jump the court tied to a specific and unusual finding: that Roh's father, former president Roh Tae-woo, had funnelled roughly 30 billion won in what the court described as slush funds into SK during Chey's early stewardship of the company, making her family's political influence, not just her marriage, part of the foundation Chey's fortune was actually built on. South Korea's Supreme Court sent the case back for further review, and Friday's ruling settled on a figure roughly two thirds of that appellate number, splitting the couple's assets on a one third to two thirds basis in Chey's favour. Chey was also separately ordered to pay around $1.3 million in alimony.