[Edaily Reporter BAEK JU-A ] A decision will be made on the 14th as to whether the property division lawsuit between Chey Tae-won (65), chairman of #SK Group, and Noh So-young (65), director of Art Center Nabi, will be settled after more than nine years.

According to legal circles, today is the last day either party can file a final appeal against the ruling in the retrial of their property division lawsuit.

If either party files a petition for a further appeal by this deadline, the case will be referred back to the Supreme Court for a new ruling. Conversely, if neither party files a further appeal by 11:59:59 p.m. today, the ruling from the retrial—which orders Chairman Choi to pay Director Noh 944 billion won in cash—will become final at midnight on the 15th.

If Chairman Choi fails to pay the property division settlement after the ruling becomes final, a 5% annual late payment interest will accrue until the debt is fully repaid. Based on the 944 billion won, this amounts to approximately 47.2 billion won per year, or about 130 million won per day.

The prevailing interpretation in legal circles is that if the ruling becomes final on the 15th, late payment interest will begin accruing the following day, the 16th. However, some argue that since Article 157 of the Civil Code stipulates that the first day of a period shall be included when the period begins at midnight, late payment interest should be calculated starting from the 15th.

As of today, neither side has issued an official statement regarding whether they will file a further appeal.

Given that many in the legal community view the result of the retrial as a de facto victory for Director Noh, observers believe it is unlikely that his side will file a further appeal.

Opinions are divided regarding Chairman Choi’s side. Some speculate that he may file a further appeal to avoid the burden of substantial late payment interest while securing the time needed to raise cash. On the other hand, there is also speculation that he may accept the ruling of the retrial to resolve the prolonged “legal risk” and focus on business operations.

If the ruling from the retrial is finalized as is, the legal dispute between the two—which began in 2017 with Chairman Choi’s application for divorce mediation—will come to an end after more than nine years.

Chairman Choi, the eldest son of the late SK Group founder Choi Jong-hyun, and Director Noh, the daughter of the late former President Roh Tae-woo, met while studying at the University of Chicago and married in 1988. They have three children together.

Although their marriage was hailed as the “wedding of the century” at the time and attracted significant attention, news of their marital breakdown emerged in 2015 when Chairman Choi revealed the existence of a child born out of wedlock in a letter sent to a daily newspaper.

Chairman Choi filed for divorce mediation in 2017, but the parties failed to reach an agreement, leading to a formal divorce lawsuit the following February. Director Noh also filed a counterclaim in December 2019, stating she would agree to the divorce.

In December 2022, the first-instance court ruled that Chairman Choi must pay Director Noh 100 million won in alimony and 66.5 billion won in property division. At the time, the court determined that the SK shares held by Chairman Choi constituted separate property and were therefore excluded from the property division.

However, in May 2024, the appellate court significantly increased the alimony to 2 billion won and the property division amount to 1.3808 trillion won. It found that the late President Roh’s “30 billion won in slush funds” and Mrs. Roh’s contributions had played a role in the growth of the SK Group, and therefore ruled that the SK shares held by Chairman Choi should also be included in the property division.

The Supreme Court overturned this decision again last October. It remanded the case on the grounds that, since former President Roh’s slush fund was illegal, even if the money had actually flowed into SK, it should not be recognized as a contribution by Mrs. Roh to the accumulation of assets.

However, the appellate court’s ruling ordering Chairman Choi to pay Mrs. Roh 2 billion won in alimony was upheld. Consequently, the retrial focused solely on the property division issue.

On the 24th of last month, the court hearing the retrial, while adhering to the Supreme Court’s reasoning for the reversal, ruled that the SK shares held by Chairman Choi themselves were subject to property division. Consequently, the amount of property division Chairman Choi must pay to Mrs. Roh was set at 944 billion won.

This is considered the largest property division payment in the history of publicly known divorce lawsuits involving South Korean chaebol families.

The appellate court set the reference date for calculating the value of the shares subject to division as April 16, 2024—the date on which oral arguments concluded in the appellate trial, which was the trial on the merits of the divorce case.

Ms. Noh’s legal team argued that the value of the shares should be calculated as of June 26—the date the arguments in the retrial concluded—but the court did not accept this argument. However, the court did take into account the fact that stock prices had risen significantly between those two dates when determining the property division ratio.