Chey Tae-won
| Chey Tae-won | |
|---|---|
| 최태원 | |
.jpg) | |
| Born | December 3, 1960 (age 65) Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea |
| Nationality | South Korean |
| Citizenship | South Korea |
| Education | Korea University (BS, physics) University of Chicago (doctoral study in economics, not completed) |
| Alma mater | Korea University; University of Chicago |
| Occupation | Business executive |
| Years active | 1980s–present |
| Employer | SK Group |
| Company | SK Group |
| Organization | SK Group; Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry |
| Title | Chairman of SK Group; chairman of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry |
| Term | 1998 – present |
| Predecessor | Chey Jong-hyun |
| Known for | Leading SK Group's expansion into semiconductors through the acquisition of Hynix |
| Net worth | About US$4.7 billion (2026) |
| Criminal charge | Embezzlement (2012) |
| Status | Convicted 2013, sentenced to four years; pardoned August 2015 |
| Spouse | Roh Soh-yeong (m. 1988; div. 2022) |
| Partner | Kim Hee-young |
| Children | 4 |
| Parents | Chey Jong-hyun |
Chey Tae-won (최태원; born 3 December 1960) is a South Korean business executive who has served as chairman of SK Group, the country's second-largest chaebol, since 1998. The group comprises some 186 subsidiaries, among them SK Telecom, SK Hynix and SK Innovation. He has been chairman of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry since March 2021, making him the principal representative of Korean business to government.
Chey took the chairmanship at the age of 38 on the death of his father, Chey Jong-hyun, and did so without the succession dispute that has attended most Korean conglomerate transitions. During his tenure SK moved from an energy and telecommunications group into semiconductors, principally through the 2012 acquisition of the memory chipmaker Hynix, a transaction widely regarded at the time as reckless and subsequently as the most consequential Korean industrial acquisition of the century.
His career includes a criminal conviction. He was indicted in January 2012 for embezzling more than US$40 million from SK companies to cover trading losses, denied wrongdoing, was convicted in January 2013 and sentenced to four years, and served time near Seoul until receiving a presidential pardon in August 2015.
His divorce from Roh Soh-yeong, an art director and daughter of the former president Roh Tae-woo, became the most publicised matrimonial case in South Korean history, described in the Korean press as the divorce of the century. A 2024 appellate award of roughly ₩1.38 trillion was set aside by the Supreme Court in October 2025 over a calculation error, and a retrial before the Seoul High Court ordered payment of ₩944 billion.
Forbes estimated his net worth at about US$4.7 billion in July 2026.
Background
The chaebol
South Korea's industrial structure is dominated by the chaebol, large family-controlled conglomerates spanning unrelated industries, of which Samsung, Hyundai, SK and LG are the largest.
They were built during the state-directed industrialisation of the 1960s and 1970s, when the government allocated credit and import licences to selected firms in exchange for meeting export targets. The resulting groups are controlled by founding families through modest direct shareholdings amplified by circular cross-holdings among affiliates, an arrangement that concentrates authority and that successive governments have attempted to unwind.
Two features matter for Chey's career. Succession passes within the family, and disputes over it have fractured several groups. And the criminal liability of chaebol chairmen has been a recurring feature of Korean public life, with convictions for embezzlement, breach of trust or bribery frequently followed by presidential pardons justified on the ground of national economic interest.
SK before Chey
The group began as Sunkyong Textiles, acquired in 1953 by Chey Jong-gun from Japanese owners after liberation. His brother Chey Jong-hyun, Chey Tae-won's father, led it into oil refining with the acquisition of Korea Oil Corporation in 1980, and into telecommunications with the purchase of Korea Mobile Telecommunications, later SK Telecom, in 1994.
By the time of Chey Jong-hyun's death in 1998, SK was an energy and telecommunications group of substantial size but narrow range, heavily exposed to the domestic market and to refining margins.
Early life and education
Chey was born on 3 December 1960 in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, the eldest son of Chey Jong-hyun.
He read physics at Korea University, taking a bachelor's degree, and went on to doctoral study in economics at the University of Chicago, which he did not complete.
He joined SK Corp. as a manager and held positions including executive director of SK America, executive director of SK Corp. and vice president of SK Corp.
Succession
Chey Jong-hyun died in 1998, and Chey Tae-won became chairman at 38.
The transition was unusual for its lack of conflict. Chey Yoon-won, son of the founder Chey Jong-gun and therefore a claimant in his own right, is reported to have supported the appointment, saying that Tae-won was the best among the cousins. The absence of a succession dispute distinguished SK from several peer groups that were weakened by them.
Career
Early chairmanship
Chey took the chairmanship in the year South Korea was recovering from the Asian financial crisis, a period in which the chaebol were under pressure to reduce debt, sell non-core businesses and improve governance.
He held senior positions across the group's operating companies, becoming chairman of SK Innovation in 2011, of SK Hynix in 2012 and of SK Telecom in February 2022.
The Sovereign Asset Management challenge
In 2003 SK Global, a trading affiliate, was found to have falsified accounts on a large scale, and the resulting crisis brought the group close to collapse and led to Chey's first conviction, for accounting fraud, in that year.
The episode attracted Sovereign Asset Management, a Monaco-based fund, which built a stake in SK Corp. and campaigned for two years to remove Chey and to restructure the group's governance. Sovereign lost the shareholder votes but the campaign forced substantial governance changes and is regarded as a formative episode in Korean shareholder activism.
Hynix
The decision that defines Chey's tenure was the acquisition of Hynix Semiconductor in 2012.
Hynix was the world's second-largest maker of memory chips and had been in creditor control since 2001, having been left insolvent by the collapse of the Hyundai group's electronics arm and by a memory price war. Several prospective buyers had examined it and withdrawn. Memory is a notoriously cyclical business requiring continuous capital investment measured in billions of dollars a year, with periodic price collapses that have bankrupted participants.
SK paid roughly ₩3.4 trillion for a controlling interest. The transaction was widely criticised as a group with no semiconductor experience taking on an enormous and volatile capital commitment.
The judgment proved correct. Consolidation left three significant DRAM producers worldwide, Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron, and the growth of mobile devices, cloud computing and subsequently artificial intelligence training hardware transformed the economics of memory. SK Hynix became the group's largest profit contributor and a leading supplier of the high-bandwidth memory used in AI accelerators.
The acquisition is generally treated as the most successful Korean industrial purchase of the period and as the reason SK overtook Hyundai to become the country's second-largest group.
Later strategy
Chey directed further expansion into batteries through SK On, into pharmaceuticals and into materials, funded in part by disposals and by the listing of subsidiaries. The battery business required heavy investment and incurred substantial losses, and SK undertook a significant restructuring from 2024 to reduce the number of affiliates and concentrate capital on semiconductors and batteries.
He has also promoted a framework he calls social value, under which SK affiliates measure and report the social and environmental effects of their operations alongside financial results, and incorporate those measures into executive evaluation. The programme has been the subject of academic study and of scepticism as to how far the measures affect decisions.
Conviction and pardon
Chey was indicted in January 2012, together with his brother Chey Jae-won, on charges of embezzling more than US$40 million from SK affiliates to cover losses on personal futures trading.
He denied wrongdoing throughout. The Seoul Central District Court convicted him in January 2013 and sentenced him to four years' imprisonment. He was incarcerated near Seoul, serving longer than most Korean conglomerate chairmen convicted of comparable offences, and was released under a presidential pardon in August 2015 granted by President Park Geun-hye.
The pardon followed the pattern of Korean practice, in which chairmen of major groups convicted of financial offences have frequently been released early on the argument that their leadership is necessary to national economic interests. The practice has been widely criticised in South Korea, and Chey's case is among those regularly cited.
Public roles
Chey has been chairman of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry since March 2021, the principal body representing Korean business, a position that makes him the customary interlocutor between the business community and government.
In May 2022 the presidential transition team appointed him head of the civilian committee supporting Busan's bid to host the World Expo in 2030. The bid was unsuccessful, losing to Riyadh.
He was named a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum in 1999, co-chaired the Forum's East Asia Economic Summit in Malaysia in 2002, joined the Brookings Institution's International Advisory Council in 2010 and convened a working group at the G20 Business Summit that year. He served twice as president of the Korea Handball Federation, in 2008 and 2016.
Personal life
Chey married Roh Soh-yeong, an art director and the daughter of former president Roh Tae-woo, in 1988. The marriage connected the SK family to the political leadership of the period, a link that has featured in later scrutiny of how the group's telecommunications licence was obtained.
The couple separated in September 2011. Chey announced his intention to divorce in December 2015, disclosing that he had fathered a child with Kim Hee-young, who became his long-term partner. The disclosure, made publicly by Chey himself in a letter to a newspaper, was without precedent among Korean business leaders.
The Seoul Family Court approved the divorce in December 2022 on terms that left Chey holding most of his shares. On appeal in May 2024 the Seoul High Court ordered him to pay approximately ₩1.38 trillion, about US$946 million, a figure far exceeding any previous Korean divorce award and reached partly on a finding that SK's growth had benefited from the political connection the marriage represented.
The Supreme Court of Korea set the award aside in October 2025, finding an error in the calculation of the couple's assets, and remanded the case. On retrial the Family Division of the Seoul High Court ordered payment of ₩944 billion, about US$644 million, some ₩436.8 billion less than the earlier figure.
The proceedings were followed closely in South Korea and are commonly referred to as the divorce of the century.
He has four children.
Assessment
Chey's record turns on one decision. The purchase of Hynix in 2012 was made against near-unanimous external scepticism, committed a group with no semiconductor experience to the most capital-intensive and cyclical business in electronics, and produced the asset that now generates most of SK's profit and gives South Korea one of the two significant positions in high-bandwidth memory. Few industrial acquisitions of the last quarter-century have been so clearly vindicated.
The rest of the record is more mixed. The battery business has consumed capital without commensurate return so far, the group's proliferation of affiliates required a substantial restructuring, and the social value programme is regarded by some analysts as more successfully communicated than implemented.
The conviction and pardon place him within a pattern that South Korea has debated for decades: whether the concentration of industrial capability in family-controlled groups justifies the leniency their leaders have received. Chey served a longer sentence than most and has spoken since about corporate responsibility, but the sequence of conviction, imprisonment and pardon followed by return to the chairmanship is the standard Korean case rather than an exception to it.
See also
References