When Billions Are on the Table: What a Failed Seoul Mediation Teaches Us

On June 15, court-ordered mediation between SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won and his former wife, Roh Soh-yeong, broke down without an agreement, sending Korea's largest-ever divorce case back to trial. Here's what happened — and what it teaches the rest of us about negotiating high-stakes disputes.

A Closed-Door Session Ends, A Public Trial Resumes

On Monday, June 15, Chey Tae-won and Roh Soh-yeong sat across from one another inside the Seoul High Court's Family Division for the first time in more than two years. The two married in 1988 and share three children. In 2015, Chey publicly acknowledged that the couple had been living separately for years and that he had a child outside the marriage; he filed for divorce two years later. Even that first attempt at resolving things began in mediation, back in 2017 — and it failed too, pushing the case into nine years of litigation that has since worked its way through three levels of Korean courts.

Monday's session was convened specifically to settle what remains of the dispute before a new round of trial. It ended the same way the 2017 attempt did. Before the session, Chey reportedly told waiting press that he hoped the matter could finally "end quickly." It didn't. The Seoul High Court has now scheduled June 26 for oral arguments to resume.

The Single Question Holding Up a Trillion-Won Settlement

At the center of the case is one asset: Chey's 17.9 percent stake in SK Inc., the holding company atop SK Group, South Korea's second-largest conglomerate by revenue. Whether that stake counts as marital property — and if so, on what date it should be valued — swings the outcome by an enormous margin. SK Inc. shares traded around ₩160,000 on April 16, 2024, the last day oral arguments were heard at the appellate level. By mid-June 2026, the same shares were trading above ₩600,000 — more than triple, on the back of a broader rally in Korea's chip sector. The result is that an identical legal dispute is worth dramatically different amounts depending almost entirely on which calendar date a judge selects.

The numbers attached to this case have moved before. In December 2022, a lower court ordered Chey to pay about ₩66.5 billion in property division and excluded the SK shares from the estate entirely, treating them as Chey's separate, inherited property. In May 2024, the Seoul High Court overturned that, valuing the couple's combined marital estate at roughly ₩4 trillion, splitting it 65/35 in Chey's favor, and ordering a payment of ₩1.38 trillion (then about $913 million) — crediting Roh's family connections and support with helping build SK's value. In October 2025, the Supreme Court let the divorce itself stand but struck down part of that math: it ruled that an alleged ₩30 billion fund Roh's father, the late President Roh Tae-woo, reportedly directed toward Chey's father could not count toward Roh's contribution, because the money appeared to be proceeds of bribery. The case was sent back for the property division to be recalculated — the exact question June's mediation was meant to resolve.

The Korea Herald reported Chey's stake was worth roughly ₩2.81 trillion as of mid-October 2025, based on that day's share price — and the price has climbed considerably further since.

Why Mediation Struggles With a Moving Target

A productive mediation usually depends on a workable range both sides can negotiate within. When the value of the asset in dispute keeps changing — and changes in a direction that benefits one side more the longer the case drags on — that range never stabilizes. Each party has a rational reason to anchor to the date and number most favorable to them, and neither has much incentive to compromise on a figure a future court ruling might simply overwrite.

There's also a deeper structural issue at play: some of what's being decided here isn't really a dispute over interests, the kind mediation is built to resolve, but a dispute over a legal rule — whether inherited shares in a family-controlled company count as marital property under Korean law. That's a precedent-setting question with implications well beyond this one couple, and it's the kind of question mediators generally can't simply split the difference on. Add nine years of public litigation, three court rulings that have each handed one side or the other a number to defend, and a level of media attention most disputes never see, and you have a case where the conditions for a successful mediation — a stable bargaining range, room to compromise, and a private space to do it in — were difficult to create from the start.

Nine Years, Two Failed Mediations

What This Means If You're Not a Billionaire

Most of the people who come through mediation aren't dividing a stake in a multibillion-dollar conglomerate. But the structural problems on display here — a moving valuation, positions that harden the longer a dispute sits in court, and an asset neither side can easily liquidate — show up, at a smaller scale, in a lot of the family and business disputes mediators see every day.

How We Approach Complex, High-Conflict Disputes

At DC Mediation & Dispute Resolution Institute, we work with individuals, families, and businesses facing disputes where money, valuation, and history are tangled together. Our approach starts before the numbers do: helping both sides agree on a fair process, a shared set of facts, and a workable valuation approach — rather than letting a court ruling set the opening anchor for everyone involved.

Mediation won't resolve every dispute. But many of the disputes that end up in years of litigation could have been resolved sooner, more privately, and at a fraction of the cost, with the right process in place from the start.

Facing a Complex or High-Conflict Dispute?

Whether it's a divorce involving shared business interests, a partnership disagreement, or another high-stakes conflict, our team can help you find a process built for your situation.

DC Mediation & Dispute Resolution Institute

This newsletter is for general informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice or create a mediator–client relationship. Details of the Chey–Roh case are drawn from public news reporting and court filings as of June 21, 2026, and may change as the litigation continues.

Reporting referenced from Bloomberg, UPI, Yonhap News Agency, The Korea Herald, The Korea Times, and The Investor.

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