An appellate court on Thursday ordered SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won to pay 1.38 trillion won (US$1 billion) in property division to the daughter of former President Roh Tae-woo, in the country’s most expensive divorce suit.
Chey of SK Group, South Korea’s second-largest conglomerate, and Roh So-young, the former president’s only daughter, married in 1988 and have three children.
Chey announced a divorce plan in 2015, admitting to having an extramarital lover and a child with her, and filed for a divorce settlement two year later.
After two years of resistance, Roh raised a countersuit in 2019, demanding half of the SK shares owned by Chey in the property division.
The Seoul High Court on Thursday ordered Chey to pay 1.38 trillion won in property division, in addition to 2 billion won in alimony, the largest known property division for a divorce in the country.
The amount marks a sharp increase from the 66.5 billion won in property division ordered by the lower family court in 2022.
The family court ha
d initially determined that Chey’s SK shares were not subject to division, but the appellate court reversed the decision, saying Roh’s “contributions to the increase in SK Group’s value and business activities should be recognized.”
“It was determined that former President Roh served as a protector or a shield for former SK Chairman Chey Jong-hyun (Tae-won’s father), resulting in intangible contributions to (SK’s) successful management activities,” the court said.
The court determined the combined property of Chey and Roh to be 4 trillion won in total, ordering a division rate of 65 percent for Chey and 35 percent for Roh. The court ordered Chey to pay the divided sum in cash.
The court also stressed that Chey “had not shown any sincere remorse for his dishonest conduct during the divorce proceedings and displayed an attitude that did not respect monogamy,” referring to his extramarital affair.
The lower court had previously determined that Chey’s SK share holdings were inherited from his father and there
fore not subject to property division.
Appealing this decision, Roh’s side argued that 34.3 billion won of hush money from her father was delivered to the former and current SK chairmen in the 1990s to be used to buy a securities affiliate and SK shares, a claim contested by Chey’s side.
Chey’s side also claimed that his status as the family of a president had been a demeriting factor, in response to Roh’s side’s argument that his status as the son-in-law of a former president profoundly contributed to his ascent to the group chief.
Source: Yonhap News Agency