With the Supreme Court on the 16th overturning and remanding the final appeal in the divorce case between Chey Tae-won, SK Group chairman, and Noh So-young, director of Art Center Nabi, Chey will be able to maintain his control of the group and focus on management activities. In May last year, the appellate court ruled, "Chairman Chey must pay Director Noh 1.3808 trillion won in property division and 2 billion won in damages," but the Supreme Court overturned and remanded the property division and finalized the 2 billion won in damages.
Chey is tasked with lending support to follow-up talks on South Korea–U.S. tariff negotiations and leading the business community as one team at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. He is also expected to accelerate the establishment of strategies related to artificial intelligence (AI), a growth engine for SK Group.
Invited by Son Masayoshi, chairman of SoftBank, Chey will depart for the United States that day. He will attend the Stargate investment attraction event to be held around the 18th at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, and is also expected to join a golf meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump during this period. Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong, Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Eui-sun, and LG Group Chairman Koo Kwang-mo are also expected to join.
Chey is expected to discuss specific cooperation plans related to Stargate with Son. Stargate is a $500 billion (about 710 trillion won) project in which SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and others will build AI data centers across the United States. Samsung Electronics and SK have agreed to supply high-performance memory semiconductors to OpenAI and support the construction of AI data centers.
As head of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Chey will provide supporting fire for follow-up discussions on South Korea–U.S. tariff negotiations along with other conglomerate chiefs. The two countries are currently negotiating over the scale of investment in the United States. Major domestic corporations, on the occasion of the South Korea–U.S. summit held in Aug., announced a plan to invest $150 billion (about 213 trillion won) in the United States.
After returning to Korea from his U.S. trip, Chey plans to focus on the APEC summit to be held in Gyeongju at the end of the month. In his capacity as KORCHAM chairman, Chey will chair the APEC CEO Summit. The APEC CEO Summit is a forum where about 1,700 people, including government officials from countries around the world and chief executive officers (CEO) of global corporations, will gather to focus on global economic issues such as AI, semiconductors, and the energy transition, and it will be held for four days starting on the 28th. On the 10th, Chey also visited Beijing and Shanghai and called for cooperation from China's political and business circles.
Chey is also focusing on AI, SK Group's new growth engine. SK will host the Future Tech Forum AI, a side event of the APEC CEO Summit, where Chey will personally present strategies for building a sustainable AI ecosystem through a keynote speech. He will also attend the SK AI Summit 2025, to be held Nov. 3–4, to discuss the progress of SK's AI ecosystem-building over the past year and future growth strategies.