The modern Chey dynasty centres on SK Group, formerly Sunkyung, built by founder Chey Jong‑gun and later led by his nephew or relative Chey Jong‑hyun.[page:51] Tae‑won was born into this already‑established chaebol on 3 December 1960 in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, as Jong‑hyun’s eldest son and default heir.[page:51]

After Shinil High School and a physics degree from Korea University, Chey went to the University of Chicago for doctoral studies in economics but left without completing the PhD.[page:51] Instead he returned to the family group, joining SK Corp. as a manager and later serving as executive director of SK America and vice‑president of SK Corp., learning the business his father and relatives had built.[page:51]

When Chey Jong‑hyun died, SK could have faced the familiar chaebol script: brothers and cousins vying for control.[page:51] Instead, Chey Tae‑won, at 38, took over as group chairman without an open management dispute, reportedly after Chey Yoon‑won — son of founder Chey Jong‑gun — endorsed him as “the best among our brothers.”[page:51]

That blessing from the founder’s line gave Tae‑won legitimacy not just as Jong‑hyun’s son but as the preferred steward of the entire Chey clan’s corporate asset.[page:51] It also signalled a strategic choice: one figure consolidating control over energy, telecom and, later, semiconductors, rather than a split among branches that could weaken SK in a competitive chaebol landscape.

As chairman since 1998, Chey oversaw SK Group’s growth into South Korea’s second‑largest conglomerate by assets, with 186 subsidiaries including SK Telecom, SK Hynix and SK Innovation.[page:51] Under his tenure, SK deepened its dominance in mobile telecom, moved aggressively into memory chips through SK Hynix and expanded across oil, petrochemicals and batteries via SK Innovation.[page:51]

Chey personally has held chairmanships across key units: SK Innovation since 2011, SK Hynix since 2012 and SK Telecom since February 2022.[page:51] In 2021 he also became chairman of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, formally positioning a Chey not just as a chaebol boss but as the face of the broader business lobby.[page:51]

In 1988, Chey married Roh Soh‑yeong, an art director and the daughter of Roh Tae‑woo, South Korea’s former president.[page:51] The union joined SK’s Chey clan to a Blue House family, knitting together chaebol capital and political lineage in a way typical of South Korea’s post‑authoritarian elite.[page:51]

The couple had four children, but by September 2011 they were separated, and in December 2015 Chey publicly announced his intention to divorce.[page:51] The proceedings dragged on for years and became a test case for how far courts would go in forcing a chaebol heir to share stock‑based wealth with a presidential in‑law.[page:51]

In January 2012, Chey was indicted for embezzling over 40 million dollars from SK companies to cover his personal trading losses, charges he denied.[page:51] In January 2013 a Seoul court found him guilty and sentenced him to four years in prison; he served time near Seoul until receiving a presidential pardon in August 2015.[page:51]

The arc — conviction, imprisonment, early release by special pardon — mirrors the path of other chaebol heads, reinforcing the perception that in South Korea, industrial dynasts are too systemically important to be kept behind bars for long.[page:51] Despite the fraud conviction, Chey returned to management and retained his positions across SK’s core subsidiaries.[page:51]

In December 2022, the Seoul Family Court approved Chey’s divorce from Roh Soh‑yeong and divided property, allowing him to keep most of his SK shares.[page:51] In May 2024 a court ordered him to pay roughly 1 billion dollars to his ex‑wife — a settlement that immediately shook SK Inc.’s stock price and was widely dubbed a “divorce of the century.”[page:51]

In October 2025, the Supreme Court of Korea overturned that settlement, citing a miscalculation that had inflated the value of the couple’s joint assets, and ordered a review.[page:51] For corporate‑governance watchers, the saga underscores how family law can intersect with chaebol control, and how far a founding family will go to avoid diluting its equity through marital property claims.[page:51]

Forbes estimated Chey Tae‑won’s personal net worth at about 1 billion dollars in December 2024, ranking him the 24th‑richest person in South Korea — modest by chaebol standards but anchored in control stock rather than cash.[page:51] Category tags on his profile place him firmly within “South Korean billionaires,” “SK Group people” and “recipients of South Korean presidential pardons,” hinting at the uneasy mix of wealth and legal exposure that comes with his role.[page:51]

While English‑language material focuses on Tae‑won himself, Korean sources make clear that SK remains a wider Chey‑family project: the descendants of founder Chey Jong‑gun and of Jong‑hyun hold interlocking stakes, board seats and executive roles across the group.[page:51] Tae‑won’s rise with Yoon‑won’s endorsement signals a clan that, at least for now, prefers unified leadership to factional splits.

Beyond SK, Chey has built a portfolio of public‑facing roles that amplify both his personal and family influence. He received the World Economic Forum’s “Global Leaders for Tomorrow” nod in 1999, co‑chaired the East Asia Economic Summit in 2002, joined the Brookings Institution’s International Advisory Council in 2010 and convened a working group at the G20 Business Summit.[page:51]

In May 2022, the presidential transition team appointed him head of the civilian committee supporting Busan’s bid to host World Expo 2030, a role that effectively placed a Chey in charge of rallying global support for a national prestige project.[page:51] Combined with his chairmanship of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, these posts make the Chey family not only a private corporate dynasty but a public broker between state, business and global forums.