Trillion-Dollar SK Hynix Empire Inheritance Plot Revealed in Choi Tae-yoon's Divorce Case Closing

Editor's Note: Today, the Seoul High Court re-reviewed the divorce settlement case between SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won and Roh Soo-young, ruling that Chey Tae-won must pay his ex-wife 944 billion Korean won (approximately $6.4 billion). Compared to the previous record-breaking second-instance ruling in Korean history, the amount has been reduced by about one-third. However, both parties can still appeal.

Yet, the significance of this high-profile divorce case has long surpassed mere wealth distribution. With SK Hynix becoming the most watched asset on the Korean capital market due to the AI chip boom, the succession path of Chey Tae-won's family is deviating from the traditional chaebol script. The future inheritance of SK is no longer just a matter of ownership and bloodline but a test of industrial judgment and adaptability to the times. This article was first published on May 12, 2026, and the following is the original content:

On November 26, 2024, at the Hwacheon Mountain Villa Hotel in Seoul's Gangseo-gu, the 50th-anniversary ceremony of a Korean higher education foundation was held. In the dimly lit venue, an AI image appeared on the screen. The image was of Chey Jong Hyun, the second-generation chairman of the SK Group and the founder of this foundation.

He passed away suddenly in Los Angeles in 1998, 26 years ago. In the AI image, he spoke again, addressing the young people who had received scholarships from the foundation to study abroad, saying, "Plant the seed in your heart, hoping that you will have the dream of growing into a tall tree; we are willing to wait for the seed you plant to grow into a tree."

Sitting at the central table below the stage were his son, Chey Tae-won, the current chairman of the SK Group and the leader of the second-largest chaebol in Korea, along with his two children who were brought to witness this scene, his daughter Chey Yoon-jung and his son Chey In-geun. Chey Tae-won later explained to the media why he brought them, saying, "This is our legacy, so they need to undergo training. They need to see what their grandfather did and what their father did." He said it was a "mandatory requirement for them to participate." At the event, he also mentioned "the well from which one drinks water": when drinking water, one must think about where the water comes from, and the beneficiary must also remember the person who initially dug the well.

SK Hynix has surged 700% in the past year, with a market capitalization just exceeding 100 trillion Korean won, surpassing its longtime rival Samsung Electronics, making it the most valuable asset ever of a Korean chaebol. As the AI boom has propelled Hynix to the most-watched position on the Korean capital market, when the outside world turned to find the heir of this company, they discovered that the third generation of SK did not position themselves according to the traditional chaebol script. The eldest daughter took the lead in the group's executive narrative, the second daughter had the deepest connections with Hynix, Washington, and the U.S. military network, and the son who seemed most like the heir, on the contrary, was the quietest of them all.

After Hynix's Soaring Rise, the Old Script of Korean Chaebol Heirs Fails

The succession of South Korean chaebols has generally revolved around four key words: eldest son, equity, marital ties, and father's approval. Samsung, Hyundai, and Hanhwa have all repeated this script in the past.

In October 2022, Lee Jae-yong, the third generation of Samsung Group, was officially appointed as chairman, completing Samsung's intergenerational transition. His eldest son, Lee Ji-ho, recently entered the South Korean Naval Academy to prepare for military service, which is itself a new generation of chaebol's "succession training move." Hyundai Motor Group followed slightly behind Samsung, with Yoon Seok accepting the baton in 2020. Hanhwa Group, on the other hand, in 2025, had Chairman Kim Seung-youn gift half of the holding company's shares to his three sons, effectively transferring the empire to the current vice chairman, Kim Dong-kwan, who is 42 years old and has never been doubted as the eldest son.

The core of this script is "allowing the public and the market to recognize the crown prince in advance." From Lee Jae-yong to Yoon Seok to Kim Dong-kwan, no matter how different their personalities, abilities, or paths, they have all been collectively written into the position of "successor" by their father, family, and the media, gradually moving towards that chair through equity, military service, education, and professional training.

SK is different. Chey Tae-won has three children with his ex-wife Roh Soo-young: eldest daughter Chey Yoon-jung (born in 1989), second daughter Chey Min-jung (born in 1991), and eldest son Chey In-geon (born in 1995). All three children are currently involved with the group's future, but none of them can fill the position of "crown prince."

Chey Yoon-jung was early on dubbed by South Korean financial media as the "most obvious successor candidate," but she works not in chips but in SK Biopharmaceuticals; Chey Min-jung had previously worked at SK Hynix's U.S. branch handling international trade and policy responses, but in 2022, she left Hynix to start a medical entrepreneurship in San Francisco; Chey In-geon is most like a traditional male heir, but in July 2025, he left SK E&S to join McKinsey's Seoul office. Following the tradition of South Korean chaebol third generations, consulting firms are seen as the path of "external training," rather than a direct succession manual.

In a 2021 interview with BBC Korean Service, Chey Tae-won himself put it plainly: "Nothing has been decided yet. My children also need to work hard to earn opportunities. My son is still young and will live his own life; I will not force him." When asked if board approval is needed for children to participate in the management, he replied, "Yes."

This stance has transformed succession from a family matter into a public legitimacy test. All three children have to prove themselves, and what they can present as proof is no longer equity, marital ties, or eldest son status.

Chey Yoon-jung: "The most obvious heir," from the lab to the boardroom

On June 28, 2024, at the SKMS Research Institute in Yeoju, Gyeonggi-do, SK Group's Business Strategy Meeting. Participants included CEOs of major SK subsidiaries such as SK, SK Innovation, SK Telecom, SK Hynix, along with key family members, totaling over 30 people. Chey Tae-won was on a business trip in the U.S. at the time and participated via video. The meeting was described by the Korean media as an intense discussion with a crisis atmosphere, with a 2-day agenda including an indefinite first day until a direction was established.

Choi Yun-jung sat at the conference table. She was the only one at the meeting with the status of Choi Tae-won's child and the youngest executive within the SK Group. The media explained her "sudden appearance" as part of an executive training program.

To understand why she was able to sit at that table, we need to go back and look at her training. Born in August 1989 at the South Korean Army Seoul Regional Hospital, Choi Yun-jung's grandfather at the time was the current President of South Korea, Roh Tae-woo. She spent her childhood and high school years in Beijing at an international school, pursued her undergraduate studies in Biology at the University of Chicago, the same university her parents attended during their studies. During her undergraduate years, she also worked as a research fellow at the Chicago Neurological Institute, had research experience at Harvard's Physical Chemistry Research Institute, and after graduation, joined Bain & Company as a consulting associate. This is the standard training for the third generation of South Korea's chaebol.

Choi Yun-jung (left) with Choi Tae-won (center) and Choi Min-jung (right)

In 2017, she joined SK Biopharmaceuticals as the Head of Strategic Investments. However, in 2019, she made a decision that was not very typical of an heir: she temporarily left SK to pursue a Master's in Biomedical Informatics at Stanford. The focus was on computational biology, not conventional biology. Two years later, she returned to SK to continue her strategic role while simultaneously pursuing a Ph.D. in Biological Science at Seoul National University. She is currently still working on her Ph.D., specializing in Genetics and Developmental Biology.

In January 2024, she was promoted to Head of Business Development at SK Biopharmaceuticals (Vice President level), leading the introduction of Radioisotope Therapy (RPT) and Radioisotope Supply Contracts. This marks the core pipeline of SK Biopharmaceuticals' transformation from traditional neurological drugs to the AI era of precision medicine. Later that year, Choi Tae-won established a new "Growth Support Division" within SK Inc., the group's top holding company, responsible for medium- to long-term planning, portfolio management, global expansion, and new business evaluation, and placed her directly in charge.

Her marriage also deviates from the traditional chaebol script. In October 2017, she married her Bain colleague Yoon Do-yeon. Yoon Do-yeon graduated from Seoul National University's Business School and later served as co-representative of the South Korean AI infrastructure startup More. The company focuses on AI model training and parallel computing software platforms, received a strategic investment from KT in 2021, and was valued at around 350 billion Korean won in 2025. This marriage does not fit the mold of a typical chaebol union, nor is it what Chinese media often refer to as "marrying an ordinary employee." It represents a new elite network combination: the chaebol heiress marrying a tech entrepreneur of the AI era.

In the narratives of female succession within chaebols like Samsung and CJ over the past few decades, daughters have often been seen through art galleries, hotels, charitable foundations, luxury retail, or dowries. Choi Yun-jung's position is different. She has taken a seat at the SK Group's decision-making table for the future. Her visibility is not defined by marriage, art, or image, but by a combination of scientific training, consulting experience, doctoral thesis, strategic investments, and her position as a group executive.

The way conglomerate heiresses are perceived is changing. But Choi Yoon-jung herself rarely speaks publicly. Referred to as the "most likely successor" by the Korean media, her personal story remains quietly unexplored in public reports.

Choi Min-jung: Heiress to Warships, Washington, and Lockheed's Globalization

On October 13, 2024, also at SK Group's own Walkerhill Hotel, Choi Tae-won's second daughter Choi Min-jung and Chinese-American entrepreneur Kevin Hwang held their special wedding.

Approximately 500 guests attended the wedding, including Lee Jae-yong, Koo Kwang-mo, Kim Dong-gwan, and other members of the SK family. Choi Tae-won and Roh Soo-young appeared in the same space for the first time after their ₩13.8 trillion divorce lawsuit, sitting side by side in the bride's parents' section. Also present were the dogs jointly raised by Choi Min-jung and Kevin Hwang.

Choi Min-jung's wedding venue

Upon the groom's entrance, Choi Min-jung walked into the venue alone without her father by her side. There was no officiant throughout the wedding. Her sister Choi Yoon-jung delivered a congratulatory message, and the groom's brother gave a speech in English. Before the ceremony began, a moment of silence was held for fallen Korean and American comrades. A table was set up on one side of the venue with medals, military tags, roses, and lemons, following the U.S. military tradition to commemorate missing and fallen soldiers known as the Missing Man Table.

Born in 1991, Choi Min-jung attended high school at the Affiliated High School of Renmin University of China and pursued a bachelor's degree in Business Administration at Peking University Guanghua School of Management. Among the third-generation chaebol heirs in South Korea, very few choose to study in China; others either go to the Ivy League or stay at prestigious Korean universities. During her time studying in Beijing, she reportedly supported herself through scholarships, part-time convenience store jobs, and income from lecturing at a preparatory school, hardly receiving any financial support from her parents. This "independent path" is an extremely rare trait among South Korean chaebol children.

In 2014, she made a decision that baffled the entire South Korean media: to apply for the 117th class of the Republic of Korea Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps. Military service is mandatory for Korean men, while women serve voluntarily, making her the first female from a chaebol family to voluntarily enlist. During her 11-week training period before commissioning, she often told her visiting family and friends the same phrase: "I am proud to be the daughter of the Republic of Korea. After the training period, I am even prouder."

Choi Min-jung in military uniform

She was assigned to the Chungmugong Yi Sun-sin-class destroyer (DDH-975) as the Combat Information Center Officer. In December 2015, she was deployed with the Qinghai Task Group to the Gulf of Aden near Somalia to carry out anti-piracy escort missions. Before retiring, she served as a Combat Information Center Watch Officer at the Battle Watch Team Headquarters of the Western Fleet Command and retired on November 30, 2017, with the rank of Navy Lieutenant.

After retiring, she returned to China and worked in a private equity firm for about a year, then pursued a Master's degree in International Business and Policy at Georgetown University in the United States. In August 2019, she joined SK Hynix's INTRA department as a Head of External Cooperation, focusing on international trade and policy response, commuting between Washington D.C. and Seoul. This was her direct connection to SK Hynix. However, she was not an engineer, product manager, or factory operator. She dealt with policy issues and later moved to SK Hynix's U.S. subsidiary's Strategic Planning Department, overseeing mergers and acquisitions.

It was during this time that she met her husband, Kevin Hwang. In the Dupont Circle area of Washington D.C., they were neighbors.

Kevin Hwang was born in Indiana, USA, holds a Bachelor's degree from Harvard and an MBA from Stanford. In 2016, he joined the U.S. Marine Corps as an officer and started working in South Korea in October 2020 as a U.S. Forces Korea Logistics Officer for about 9 months. Both of them have military backgrounds, and the Korean media described their relationship as "deepened by a shared military experience."

In February 2022, Choi Min-jung took a leave of absence from SK Hynix and went to San Francisco to work as an unpaid advisor at the telemedicine startup Done Global, later revealed by Korean media to have actually served as the CFO. A year later, she co-founded Integral Health with a scholar from the Yale School of Medicine in the field of psychiatry, serving as the CEO, focusing on AI-driven collaborative care and behavioral health integration.

Her current LinkedIn self-introduction reads as "Founder of Integral Health | Investor in Healthcare & AI | Veteran | 2x Exits." The tag of "veteran" still prominently sits in her profile.

A recurring theme in Choi Min-jung's life is the military. From Shackleton to the Gulf of Aden, from Washington D.C. at SK Hynix INTRA to marrying a former U.S. Marine Corps Captain. She did not follow her sister's path into the internal management of SK, nor did she marry into a prominent family in South Korea as per the traditional chaebol script, but she personified the new-era position where SK Hynix finds itself. Semiconductor companies are increasingly resembling geopolitical firms in the AI era, dealing with U.S. policies, trade regulations, supply chain security, and capital mergers and acquisitions. Choi Min-jung's resume conveniently aligns along this trajectory.

Choi Ungon: The Most Likely Heir Who Remains the Most Silent

Choi Ungon's story must begin with a hospital room.

In 2003, the SK Group was embroiled in an accounting scandal that led to Choi Tae-won's imprisonment. That same year, his youngest son, Choi Ungon, was diagnosed with childhood diabetes and told he would need insulin injections for life. Choi Ungon was 8 years old at the time.

During that period, Roh Soo-yeon, the daughter of a former South Korean president, took her child and lived in a pediatric ward at Seoul National University Hospital. At night, as Choi Ungon slept in his bed, she sat alone by his side. Roh Soo-yeon later recalled in an interview that when her son turned 17, he was still struggling with diabetes, but he was a very cheerful boy. He often served in the church choir near their home, performed special songs with beatboxing during service, and even copied the Bible with his second sister, Choi Min-jung, at night.

Choi Ungon's educational path differed from his two sisters. He first attended a non-traditional high school in South Korea known for its innovative education, then transferred to Hawaii. His mother, Roh Soo-yeon, believed in an educational philosophy of "not stressing about fitting children into the same university mold as others" and advocated for an explorative and creative parenting approach. While Choi Ungon was studying in high school in Hawaii, Roh Soo-yeon lived there for over two years, accompanying him.

He later enrolled at Brown University in the U.S. to study Physics, following in the footsteps of his elders. Choi Tae-won also majored in Physics at Korea University, and Choi Tae-won's younger brother, Choi Jae-yong, is also a Brown University Physics alum. This is the only clear academic continuity in this family. Choi Ungon had a good relationship with Choi Tae-won, frequently communicating and playing tennis together. They were even photographed chatting shoulder to shoulder outside a restaurant in Seoul.

Choi Ungon (left) with his father Choi Tae-won (right)

After graduating, he interned at a Boston consulting group and then joined the SK E&S strategic planning team in September 2020, focusing on natural gas market expansion. In 2025, he left SK and joined the Seoul office of McKinsey. The South Korean media interpreted this move as the standard path of "third-generation chaebol external training," but Choi Ungon himself has not made any public statements.

According to the old script of South Korean chaebols, Choi Ungon should have been the default successor. As the eldest son who also carried on the family's academic continuity, his trajectory from SK to McKinsey follows a similar training path to that of Lee Jae-yong and Chung Eui-sun in the past. However, with no public statements reported, the contents of the petition he submitted during his parents' divorce case undisclosed, and currently holding no shares in the SK Group, he appears to be someone who has been assigned a position in the old script but refuses to take it.

Choi Rengen is the most heir-like of these three children, and also the most silent one.

The Family in Court

Even as the three children's trajectories remain independent, they cannot avoid their parents' marriage. They have not spoken out through interviews or social media but have entered the public narrative of their parents' marriage through legal documents.

Choi Tae-won and Roh Soo-young held their wedding at the Blue House in 1988, with the then Prime Minister as the officiant. Roh Soo-young's father was the newly appointed President of South Korea, Roh Tae-woo, that same year. In 2015, Choi Tae-won published the "Illegitimate Child Confession Book" in The South Korea Daily, openly admitting to having a daughter with his cohabiting partner Kim Hee-young, and requested a divorce from Roh Soo-young, who refused. In 2017, Choi Tae-won again applied for a divorce settlement and entered litigation. In 2019, Roh Soo-young counterclaimed for divorce, seeking consolation money and the division of assets corresponding to shares of SK Corporation.

Young Choi Tae-won and Roh Soo-young

This lawsuit has received sustained international media attention for three reasons: the division amount may set a record in Korean court history, the former president's family funds are involved in SK Group's early capital structure, and Choi Tae-won's actual control of SK Holdings may be undermined due to the large division.

In the first-instance ruling of the Seoul Family Court in 2022, Choi Tae-won was ordered to divide 665 billion Korean won in assets with Roh Soo-young and give her approximately 310,000 shares of SK Holdings, transforming her from a 0.01% shareholder on the edge to the company's fourth-largest shareholder. In the May 2024 appeal, the division amount soared to 1.38 trillion Korean won, marking the highest single divorce property division in Asian legal history. In October 2025, the South Korean Supreme Court overturned part of the property division from the appeal and remanded it for a retrial.

In May 2023, the three legitimate children submitted petitions to the Seoul High Court's Family Division 2 for the second-instance trial of their parents' divorce case for three consecutive days. The second daughter, Choi Min-jung, submitted on the 15th, followed by the eldest son, Choi Rengen, on the 16th, and the eldest daughter, Choi Yoon-jung, on the 17th. The three children collectively appeared in their parents' divorce case file through legal documents, but what they actually wrote and which side they took has not been disclosed to this day.

At Choi Min-jung's wedding in 2024, against the backdrop of the 1.38 trillion won divorce lawsuit, Choi Tae-won and Roh Soo-young appeared together for the first time in the same space, sitting side by side in the bride's parents' section. After the ceremony, the two families collectively greeted the guests around the table. This brief ceremonial presence is the final family scene that the three children could arrange for their parents after the structural failure of their marriage.

Like most chaebol families, what SK's third-generation heir inherited was never just a company or a shareholding.

When SK Hynix Became a Geopolitical Asset, Succession Was No Longer Domestic

Think back to that commemorative event in 2024.

Grandfather Choi Jong-hyun appeared via AI imagery, speaking to the grandchildren, while father Choi Tae-won told the children that this was a family legacy and they needed to undergo training. Among the children seated below, eldest daughter Choi Yoon-jung would continue to lead SK Inc.'s Growth Support Division the following year, while eldest son Choi In-gun would leave SK that same summer to join McKinsey. Second daughter Choi Min-jung was not present that day. She would reappear over ten months later as the founder of her own AI healthcare company, holding her wedding at the same hotel and observing a moment of silence for fallen Korean and American soldiers before the ceremony.

The more SK Hynix resembled a global geopolitical asset, the less SK's heirs looked like traditional successors.

Yoon-jung's visibility no longer came from marriage or family portraits, but from whether she could present SK's next growth narrative beyond chips; Min-jung's position was not in SK Hynix's factories or headquarters, but amid the Washington policy circle, a neighbor to the Pentagon, wife to a U.S. Marine, and balancing AI healthcare entrepreneurship. She personified the industrial attribute of this company revalued by the AI era. Inheritance should have defaulted to In-gun following the old script, but his silence indicated that merely being the first son and maintaining the family's academic continuity were no longer sufficient to automatically confer succession legitimacy.

The marriage ties of Korean chaebol families have not vanished; they have simply shifted from the Blue House and domestic chaebol circles to Silicon Valley AI infrastructure startups and Washington's U.S. Marine Reserve officers. Yoon-jung married More's representative, Yoon Dae-yeon, while Min-jung married Kevin Hwang, a former Pentagon resident. It's still an elite union, but the elites are no longer on the same map.

At the 50th-anniversary event, Choi Tae-won told his children, "Remember your roots." For SK's heirs, inheritance is not a key or a shareholding list—it's about being brought to the "water source," witnessing how the previous generation drew water, and then being asked to dig their own well in their era.

However, their era is no longer their grandfather's time of industrial patriotism or their father's era of political-business marriages and group expansion. At the same moment SK Hynix was propelled by the AI era into a global supply chain hub, Choi's three children were sent to the forefront of AI labs, the Washington social circuit, and Wall Street boardrooms. What they inherit is a set of questions from the global AI industry game, not any single answer.

Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:

Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia