South Korea court docket orders SK Group boss to pay a document $1 billion divorce settlement

Seoul — The chairman of South Korea’s sprawling SK Group was ordered by a court docket on Thursday to pay his spouse $1 billion in money within the nation’s largest divorce settlement. 

The Seoul Excessive Courtroom ordered Chey Tae-won to pay Roh So-young, the daughter of former president Roh Tae-woo, 1.38 trillion received, or barely over $1 billion, as a settlement, court docket paperwork supplied to AFP confirmed.

The quantity was a big improve from an earlier decrease court docket ruling of 66.5 billion received and takes into consideration the contributions Roh So-young and her father made to Chey’s success.

SK Group runs companies that embrace South Korea’s main cellular service and in addition controls SK Hynix, the world’s second-largest reminiscence chip maker.

“It was cheap to rule that, as his spouse, Roh performed a job in growing the worth of SK Group and Chey’s enterprise exercise,” the court docket stated in a verdict obtained by AFP.

Chey married Roh So-young in 1988 however they’ve been separated for years. She appealed towards the unique settlement quantity awarded in 2022, a number of years after Chey filed for divorce in what has develop into an acrimonious case.

The court docket stated the brand new settlement additionally took into consideration the emotional struggling Roh So-young endured on account of Chey’s extramarital affair.

Chey has a toddler together with his new associate.

The court docket stated Chey “shouldn’t be displaying any indicators of regret for his foul behaviour in the midst of the trial… nor respect for monogamy,” ordering him to pay the settlement in money.

Chey’s web wealth was assessed by the court docket to be round 4 trillion received, that means Roh So-young will take 35 p.c of it within the settlement.

His authorized workforce stated they might lodge an attraction towards the most recent ruling, claiming the court docket had “taken Roh’s one-sided declare as factual”.

The Seoul Excessive Courtroom stated Roh Tae-woo additionally helped Chey’s enterprise flourish throughout his 5 years as president from 1988, easing regulatory hurdles for SK’s late former chairman Chey Jong-hyon, Chey Tae-won’s father.

“Former president Roh Tae-woo performed the function of a protecting protect for ex-chairman Chey Jong-hyon” when the late businessman was making an attempt to faucet into the cellular service enterprise, the court docket stated, giving “intangible assist” to the household.

Chey’s legal professionals disagreed, saying SK Group had been below strain from the Roh authorities and had “supplied varied monetary contributions”.

“We’ll set issues straight by way of the attraction,” they stated.

A former normal, Roh Tae-woo was elected to the presidency in 1987 polls that had been South Korea’s first free and honest election in additional than a decade.

He had earlier helped his army academy buddy Chun Doo-hwan stage a army coup and take over as a dictator.

Roh Tae-woo is much less reviled than Chun, partially for the financial development he oversaw and his diplomatic outreach to the previous communist bloc, which noticed Seoul set up relations with each Moscow and Beijing.