Mediation fails as asset dispute turns on whether SK stake is valued at 2024 or current prices
SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won and his former wife, Roh Soh-yeong, failed to settle their property dispute in mediation on Monday, sending the case back to formal arguments over a contested question that now controls its size: To what date should the stock price be pegged?
Since the couple last argued the case in April 2024, shares in SK Inc., the holding company at the top of South Korea’s second-largest conglomerate, have roughly quadrupled, lifted by SK hynix and global demand for memory chips for artificial intelligence. The divorce itself is settled. The division of assets is not, and the surge has turned it into a multitrillion-won question that also bears on the chairman’s control of the group.
The Seoul High Court’s family division held a second mediation session Monday afternoon, the couple’s first joint courtroom appearance since the final appellate hearing in April 2024. After about 90 minutes, the two sides failed to reach a settlement, and the court set a hearing for June 26 at 10 a.m., returning the case to formal arguments.
Chey did not attend the first mediation session last month.
At issue is whether Chey’s stake of about 17.9 percent in SK Inc. counts as marital property, and if so, the date on which its value should be fixed. Under Korean law, a settlement divides assets by each spouse’s contribution to the couple’s wealth rather than by an automatic split. Chey’s side argues the shares are personal assets received by inheritance or gift and should be valued at the April 16, 2024, appellate date.
Roh’s side argues they are joint property and should be measured at the current, far higher price.
The timing accounts for the bulk of the money. When the appellate court closed arguments in 2024, SK Inc. traded near 176,000 won, valuing the stake at roughly 2 trillion won ($1.3 billion). It closed around 593,000 won on June 12. Depending on which of at least three candidate dates the court picks, the same shares are worth anywhere from about 2 trillion to more than 7 trillion won.
A 2024 appellate ruling ordered Chey to pay 1.38 trillion won, then a Korean record, before the Supreme Court overturned the award in October 2025, rejecting the lower court’s reliance on alleged slush funds tied to Roh’s father, former President Roh Tae-woo.
How Chey would fund any settlement reaches beyond the family. Much of his wealth sits in SK shares, not cash, and part of his stake is already pledged as collateral, leaving loans or share sales as the likely options for a chairman whose group controls a top supplier of AI memory chips.
mjh@heraldcorp.com
