Tomorrow, July 24, the Family Division 1 of the Seoul High Court will deliver its final verdict in the retrial of the divorce asset division case between SK hynix chief Chey Tae-won and his ex-wife, Noh So-young. This nearly decade-long legal battle, marked by several reversals and dubbed a "historic billion-dollar divorce" by South Korean media, is approaching a decisive judicial ruling. The appellate court judges will determine how to divide Chey Tae-won's assets, which are valued at up to approximately $5 billion on paper, and the portion his ex-wife, Noh So-young, is entitled to.

In 1988, during South Korea's rapid economic growth, Chey Tae-won, the son of SK Group's founder and the conglomerate's heir, married Noh So-young, the eldest daughter of then-President Roh Tae-woo. The wedding, held at the Blue House, was hailed as a "wedding of the century" by local media at the time, seen as a deeply intertwined alliance between political and business resources. Their marriage lasted 34 years and produced three children. During this period, Chey Tae-won completed his full control over SK Group, led the acquisition of Hynix (now SK hynix), aggressively expanded into the semiconductor sector, and propelled the company to become a global leader in memory chips. In 2015, Chey Tae-won publicly acknowledged a long-term extramarital affair and a child born from it via an open letter, formally expressing his desire for divorce. Noh So-young initially refused. It was not until 2017, when Chey Tae-won formally filed for divorce mediation and it completely broke down, that the legal proceedings began. In 2019, after all three children had reached adulthood, Noh So-young changed her stance, filed a countersuit, and stopped trying to preserve the marriage. Instead, she demanded a high-value asset division and compensation for mental anguish, kicking off a protracted judicial battle.

Examining the history of the rulings reveals significant differences in judicial standards, which became the core unresolved issues for this retrial. In the first-instance trial in 2022, the Seoul Family Court ruled that Chey Tae-won's core SK equity holdings were primarily inherited from his family or gifted by elders, constituting his personal property. It ordered him to pay Noh So-young only 66.5 billion won in asset division, plus 100 million won in compensation for mental anguish, a very small portion of his total assets. Noh So-young immediately appealed, arguing the ruling denied her decades of family and indirect business contributions. In the second-instance trial in 2024, the court issued a dramatic reversal. The panel accepted evidence from Noh So-young's side, acknowledging that former President Roh Tae-woo had provided resources and financial support for SK Group's early development and that Noh So-young had long maintained family relationships that facilitated the company's stable operations. It drastically increased the asset division amount to 1.3808 trillion won (nearly $1 billion) and raised the mental anguish compensation to 2 billion won. This amount set a new record for divorce asset division in South Korean judicial history, earning it the title of the "most expensive divorce judgment" in the country.

After the high-value second-instance ruling, Chey Tae-won immediately appealed. In October 2025, the Supreme Court of South Korea upheld the 2 billion won in mental anguish damages but completely overturned the second-instance ruling's massive asset division. The core reason was that the 30 billion won Roh Tae-woo had invested in SK had compliance issues regarding its source and could not be counted as Noh So-young's effective contribution to the enterprise. The case was sent back to the Seoul High Court for retrial on the asset division aspect, while confirming the complete dissolution of the marriage. Entering the retrial phase in 2026, the court conducted two pre-trial mediations. However, the parties could not bridge their differences on the scope of assets and valuation standards, so both mediations failed. The court ultimately set July 24 for the final verdict. Since early 2025, SK hynix's stock price has risen nearly tenfold, more than doubling Chey Tae-won's net worth. On July 10, SK hynix was officially listed on the Nasdaq exchange in New York via ADRs. On its first day, the stock surged 12.76%, and the total offering raised $26.5 billion, making it the second-largest stock offering in U.S. history.

As the retrial verdict approaches tomorrow, external attention is highly focused on two core points of contention, which will directly determine the final scale of asset division. First is the legal classification of the equity in SK Group's listed companies. Chey Tae-won's legal team has consistently argued that the vast majority of his shares came from his father's inheritance and are not marital property accumulated through joint efforts, therefore they should not be subject to division. Noh So-young's side, however, argues that over their 34-year marriage, she maintained the stability of the conglomerate family as a spouse and used her family's political influence to remove external obstacles for the group's development. She claims she made substantial contributions to the long-term appreciation of the equity and demands a 50% split of the corresponding shareholding interests. The second key point of dispute is the valuation date for the massive assets. From 2025 to the present, the explosion in AI computing demand has driven the memory chip market higher, significantly increasing SK hynix's market capitalization. Chey Tae-won's personal net worth on paper has reached a peak of around $5 billion. Chey Tae-won's legal team argues that the marital partnership had effectively ended. They contend that the subsequent stock price surge was driven by the company's independent operational decisions and industry cycle dividends, and that Noh So-young did not participate in the later operational value creation. Following the spirit of South Korea's marital property division legislation, they argue that asset premiums accrued after separation should not be included in the division base. They advocate using April 16, 2024, the closing date of the second-instance trial arguments, as the valuation point, when SK's stock price was 160,000 won per share. In contrast, Noh So-young's side is pushing for the latest stock price on the day of the retrial verdict as the asset valuation benchmark, specifically June 26, 2026. On that date, SK hynix's stock price had exceeded 800,000 won per share. If the ruling favors Noh So-young's request, her asset division payout could reach up to $1 billion. However, Chey Tae-won's legal team believes the final amount will be far lower.

As a pillar of South Korea's semiconductor industry, the stability of SK Group's ownership structure is also drawing close attention from the capital markets. If the current ruling orders Chey Tae-won to transfer a large portion of his SK holdings, Noh So-young would become a major shareholder in the group. This would likely trigger a change in the controlling shareholder's stake and a fine-tuning of the corporate governance structure, potentially causing short-term volatility in the listed company's stock price. Several analysts from South Korean securities firms have noted in their reports that, more than the division amount itself, the long-term impact of the ruling's precedent on two key legal questions – "whether inherited conglomerate equity is divisible" and "how to attribute asset appreciation after the marriage ends" – is far more profound.