On November 26, 2024, at the Walkerhill Hotel in the Gangbuk-gu district of Seoul, South Korea, the 50th-anniversary ceremony of the Korea Higher Education Foundation. As the venue lights dimmed, an AI image appeared on the screen. The image showed Choi Joon-hyun, the second-generation chairman of the SK Group and the founder of this foundation.

In 1998, he suddenly passed away in Los Angeles, 26 years ago. In the AI image, he spoke again, addressing the young people who had received foundation scholarships to study abroad that year: "Plant the seed in your heart, hoping you will 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 was his son, Choi Tae-won, the current chairman of the SK Group and the leader of the second-largest chaebol in Korea, along with the two children he brought to witness this scene, his eldest daughter Choi Yoon-jung and eldest son Choi In-geon. Choi Tae-won later explained to the media why he brought them: "This is our legacy, so they need to receive training. They need to see what their grandfather did, what their father did." He said it was a "mandatory requirement for them to participate." He also mentioned "When drinking water, think of the source": when drinking water, one should think about where the water comes from, and the beneficiary should remember the person who dug the well initially.

SK Hynix saw a 700% surge in the past year, with a market value just exceeding 100 trillion South Korean won, surpassing its longtime rival Samsung Electronics, making it the most valuable asset in the history of Korean chaebols. As the AI boom pushed Hynix to the most-watched position on the Korean capital market, when the outside world looked for the heir of this company, it found that the third generation of SK did not follow the traditional chaebol script. The eldest daughter was the first to enter the group's executive narrative, the second daughter had the deepest connections with Hynix, Washington, and the U.S. military network, and the eldest son, who looked most like the heir, turned out to be the quietest among them.

After the Hynix Surge, the Old Script of Korean Chaebol Heirs Fails

There have been roughly four key words in the succession of Korean chaebols: eldest son, equity, marital ties, and father's approval. Samsung, Hyundai, and Hanhwa have all repeated this script.

In October 2022, Lee Jae-yong, the third generation of the Samsung Group, was officially appointed as chairman, completing the generational transition at Samsung; his eldest son Lee Ji-ho recently enrolled in the South Korean Naval Academy to prepare early for military service, which in itself is a "succession training move" for the new generation of Korean chaebol heirs. Hyundai Motor Group followed Samsung slightly later, with the third generation Chung Eui-sun taking over in 2020. Hanhwa Group, on the other hand, in 2025, Chairman Kim Seong-won transferred half of the holding company's shares to his three sons, effectively passing the empire to the current vice chairman Kim Dong-gwan, who is 42 years old and has never been doubted as the eldest son.

The core of this script is to "let the public and the market recognize in advance who the crown prince is." From Lee Jae-yong to Chung Eui-sun to Kim Dong-gwan, regardless of personality, ability, or path differences, they have all been collectively written into the position of "successor" by their father, family, and the media, and step by step, through equity, military service, education, and professional training, they move towards that chair.

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 linked to 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," but she is not involved in chips; instead, she is in SK Biopharmaceuticals. Chey Min-jung had worked at SK Hynix's U.S. branch dealing with international trade and policy responses, but in 2022, she left Hynix for San Francisco to pursue a medical startup. Chey In-geon most resembles a traditional male heir, but in July 2025, he left SK E&S to join McKinsey's Seoul office. Following the usual practice for Korea's chaebol third generation, a consulting firm is the path for "external training," rather than a direct succession plan.

In a 2021 interview on BBC Korean Service, Chey Tae-won himself put it plainly, "Nothing has been decided yet. My children must also strive for opportunities. My son is still young and will live his own life; I will not force him." When asked if board approval is required for children to participate in management, he answered, "Yes."

This statement turned inheritance from a family matter into a public legitimacy test. The three children must prove themselves, and what they can present as proof is no longer just about ownership, marriage connections, or being the eldest son.

Chey Yoon-jung: "The Most Obvious Heir," From Lab to Boardroom

On June 28, 2024, at the Gyeonggi-do Icheon SKMS Research Institute, the SK Group Business Strategy Meeting took place. The attendees were CEOs of major subsidiaries such as SK, SK Innovation, SK Telecom, SK Hynix, along with key family members of the group, totaling over 30 people. Chey Tae-won was on a business trip in the United States at the time, participating via video conference. The meeting was described by the Korean media as an intense discussion with a sense of crisis, spanning 2 days and 1 night, with the first day having "no set end time" until a direction was determined.

Chey Yoon-jung sat at the boardroom table. She was the only one with the Chey Tae-won's child status to attend this meeting and is the youngest executive within the SK Group. The media explained her "sudden appearance" as part of an executive training program.

To understand why she could sit at that table, we need to go back and look at her training. In August 1989, Chey Yoon-jung was born at Seoul National Military Hospital in South Korea. At that time, her maternal grandfather Roh Tae-woo was the incumbent president of South Korea. She spent her childhood and high school years in Beijing attending an international school. She pursued her undergraduate studies in biology at the University of Chicago, the same university where her parents had studied. During her undergraduate years, she spent two years as a research fellow at the Chicago Brain Research Institute and had research experience at Harvard's Department of Physical Chemistry. After graduation, she joined Bain & Company as a consulting associate. This is the standard training for South Korea's chaebol third generation.

Yunjeong Choi (Left) with Taeyuan Choi (Center) and Minjeong Choi (Right)

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

In January 2024, she was promoted to Deputy General Manager of the Business Development Division at SK Biopharmaceuticals, leading the introduction of Radioisotope Therapy (RPT) and Radioisotope Supply Contracts. This is a crucial pipeline for SK Biopharmaceuticals as they transition from traditional neuroscience drugs to the AI era of precision medicine. Later that year, Taeyuan Choi established a "Growth Support Division" within SK Group's holding company, SK Inc., and placed her in charge. She oversees mid-to-long-term planning, portfolio management, global expansion, and new business assessment.

Her marriage also deviates from the old chaebol script. In October 2017, she married her Bain colleague Doyeon Yoon. Doyeon Yoon, a graduate of Seoul National University's Business School, later served as Co-CEO of the South Korean AI infrastructure startup More. The company focuses on AI model training and computational parallelization software platforms. In 2021, More received a strategic investment from KT, valuing the company at around 350 billion KRW. This union is not a traditional chaebol marriage, nor is it what Chinese media often describe as "marrying a common employee." It is a new elite network alliance: a chaebol heiress marrying a tech entrepreneur in the AI era.

In the narrative of female succession at chaebols like Samsung and CJ over the past few decades, daughters were often seen through art galleries, hotels, charitable foundations, luxury retail, or dowries for their children. Yunjeong Choi's position is different. She has a seat at the table where SK Group's future direction is decided. Her visibility is not defined by marriage, art, or image shaping, but by her scientific training, consulting experience, doctoral thesis, strategic investments, and corporate executive position.

The way chaebol daughters are seen is changing. However, Yunjeong Choi herself rarely speaks publicly. While Korean media discusses her as the "most likely successor candidate," her personal story remains relatively quiet in public reports.

Minjeong Choi: Heiress of a Warship, Washington, and Raytheon's Globalization

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

Approximately 500 guests attended the wedding, including Lee Jae-yong, Koo Kwang-mo, Kim Dong-kwan, and other SK family members. Choi Tae-yeon and Roh Soo-young appeared in the same space for the first time after their ₩138 trillion divorce lawsuit, sitting side by side in the bride's parents' section. On the side, there were also dogs co-raised by Choi Min-jin and Kevin Hwang.

Choi Min-jung's Wedding Venue

After the groom's entrance, Choi Min-jin walked into the venue alone without being escorted by her father. There was no officiant throughout the wedding. Her sister Choi Yoon-jung gave a congratulatory speech, and the groom's brother delivered 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, dog tags, roses, and lemons, following the U.S. military tradition to honor missing and fallen servicemen, known as the Missing Man Table.

Choi Min-jin, born in 1991, attended high school at the High School Affiliated to Renmin University of China and pursued a degree in Business Administration at Peking University Guanghua School of Management. Among the third generation of chaebol families in South Korea, very few go to China for their undergraduate studies; they either go to an Ivy League school or stay at prestigious universities in Korea. During her studies in Beijing, she reportedly supported herself through scholarships, part-time jobs at convenience stores, and income from tutoring, almost without any financial support from her parents. This "independent path" is an extremely rare phenomenon among chaebol children in Korea.

In 2014, she made a decision that puzzled all Korean media: applying for the 117th term of the Republic of Korea Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps. While military service is mandatory for Korean men, it is entirely voluntary for women. This was the first time in a chaebol family that a woman voluntarily enlisted. During her interview, she mentioned being inspired by the spirit of challenge and leadership of the 1915 Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton. During the 11-week training period before her commissioning, she often told her visiting family and friends the same sentence: "I am proud to be a daughter of the Republic of Korea. After the training period, I felt even prouder."

Choi Min-jung Military Photo

She was assigned to the Chungmugong Yi Sun-sin-class destroyer (DDH-975) as a Combat Information Center Officer. In December 2015, she was deployed with the Cheonghae Unit's 19th rotation near Somalia in the Gulf of Aden to conduct anti-piracy escort missions. Before her discharge, she served as a Combat Information Center Officer at the Headquarters of the Second Fleet in the West Sea Combat Fleet, retiring on November 30, 2017, with the rank of Navy Lieutenant.

After retiring, she returned to China and worked at an investment company for about a year in private equity. She then went to Georgetown University in the United States to pursue a Master's in International Business and Policy. In August 2019, she joined SK hynix's External Cooperation Department, INTRA, focusing on international trade and policy response, shuttling between Washington D.C. and Seoul. This was her direct connection to SK hynix. However, she was not an engineer, not a product manager, nor a factory operator. She dealt with policy and later moved to SK hynix's U.S. subsidiary's Strategic Department, in charge of mergers and acquisitions.

It was during this time that she met her husband, Kevin Hwang. In the DuPont Circle area of Washington D.C., the two 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 from October 2020, worked in South Korea for about 9 months as a U.S. Forces Korea Logistics Officer. Both of them have a military background, with the Korean media describing their relationship as deepened through 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 consultant at the telemedicine startup Done Global, which Korean media later revealed she 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 is "Founder of Integral Health | Investor in Healthcare & AI | Veteran | 2x Exits." The "Veteran" tag is still in the most prominent position.

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 officer. She did not enter the internal management of SK like her sister, nor did she marry into a prestigious Korean family following the traditional conglomerate script, but she has epitomized the position SK hynix holds in this new era. A semiconductor company is becoming more like a geopolitical firm in the AI era, dealing with U.S. policy, trade regulations, supply chain security, and capital mergers. Choi Min Jung's background happens to align with this trajectory.

Choi Rengun: The Most Heir-like Person, Why the Most Silent

The story of Choi In-geon must begin with a hospital room.

In 2003, the SK Group was involved in an accounting scandal, leading to the imprisonment of Choi Tae-won. That same year, his youngest son, Choi In-geon, was diagnosed with childhood diabetes along with his mother, Roh Soo-young. The doctor said he would need insulin injections for life. Choi In-geon was 8 years old at the time.

During that period, Roh Soo-young, the daughter of a former South Korean president, took her child and moved into the pediatric ward of Seoul National University Hospital. At night, while Choi In-geon slept in his bed, she sat by his side alone. Roh Soo-young 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 at night, he would copy the Bible with his older sister Choi Min-jeong.

Choi In-geon's educational path was different from that of his two sisters. He first studied at a non-traditional high school known for its innovative education in South Korea, then transferred to Hawaii. His mother, Roh Soo-young, believed in an education philosophy of "not being anxious to fit children into the same university mold as others," advocating for an exploration of a different, creative parenting approach. While Choi In-geon attended high school in Hawaii, Roh Soo-young lived there for over two years, accompanying him.

He later enrolled at Brown University in the United States to study physics, following in the footsteps of his elders. Choi Tae-won had also majored in physics at Korea University, and Choi Tae-won's younger brother, SK Group Vice Chairman Choi Jae-yong, was also a Brown University physics graduate. This was the family's only clear academic continuity. Choi In-geon had a good relationship with Choi Tae-won, with frequent communication and activities such as playing tennis together. They were even seen shoulder to shoulder outside a restaurant in Seoul.

Choi In-geon (left) with his father Choi Tae-won (right)

After graduation, 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 a standard path of "third-generation chaebol members gaining external experience," but Choi did not make any public statements.

According to the old script of South Korean chaebols, Choi In-geon should have been the heir apparent. As the eldest son and inheritor of the family's academic continuity, his trajectory from SK to McKinsey resembled the training paths of Lee Jae-yong and Chung Eui-sun. However, without any public statements reported, the contents of the petition he submitted in his parents' divorce case have not been made public, and he currently does not hold any shares in the SK Group. He seems like someone who has been assigned a role in an old script but refuses to take it.

Choi Rengen is the most heir-like of the three children and also the most reserved.

The Family in Court

Even though the three children's backgrounds are distinct, they cannot escape their parents' marriage. They have not spoken out through interviews or social media but have entered their parents' marriage's public narrative through legal documents.

Choi Taiwon and Lu Suyeong held their wedding at the Blue House in 1988, with the then Prime Minister officiating. Lu Suyeong's father was the newly appointed President of South Korea, Lu Taeyoo. In 2015, Choi Taiwon published the "Illegitimate Child Confession" in The South Korea Daily, openly admitting to having a daughter with his cohabiting partner Kim Hee-yeong, and requested a divorce from Lu Suyeong, who refused. In 2017, Choi Taiwon applied for divorce mediation again, leading to litigation. In 2019, Lu Suyeong counter-filed for divorce, seeking consolation money and a division of assets corresponding to shares in SK Corporation.

A young Choi Taiwon and Lu Suyeong

This lawsuit has attracted international media attention for three reasons: the settlement amount could set a record in South Korean court history, the former president's family funds are involved in SK Group's early capital structure, and Choi Taiwon's actual control of SK's shares may be jeopardized by the hefty division.

In the first instance in 2022, the Seoul Family Court ruled for Choi Taiwon to divide ₩665 billion in assets with Lu Suyeong and awarded Lu Suyeong approximately 310,000 shares of SK Control, elevating her from a 0.01% shareholder to the company's fourth largest shareholder. In the May 2024 retrial, the settlement amount surged to ₩1.38 trillion, marking the largest single divorce asset division in Asian legal history. In October 2025, the South Korean Supreme Court overturned part of the asset division from the retrial and remanded it for reconsideration.

In May 2023, the three legitimate children submitted a petition to the Seoul High Court Family 2 Division, which was presiding over their parents' divorce case, for three consecutive days. Second daughter Choi Minjeong submitted on the 15th, eldest son Choi Rengen on the 16th, and eldest daughter Choi Yoonjeong on the 17th. The three children collectively appeared in their parents' divorce case file in the form of legal documents, but what they wrote and whose side they took has not been disclosed to this day.

In 2024, at Choi Minjeong's wedding, Choi Taiwon and Lu Suyeong appeared in the same space for the first time under the backdrop of the ₩1.38 trillion divorce lawsuit, sitting side by side in the bride's parents' seats. After the ceremony, both families greeted guests together around the table. This brief ceremonial coexistence is the final family tableau the three children could arrange for their parents after the structural failure of their marriage.

Like most chaebol families, for SK's third-generation heir, inheritance has never been just about a company or a shareholding.

When SK Hynix Becomes a Geopolitical Asset, Inheritance Is No Longer a Family Matter

Let's go back to that commemorative event in 2024.

Grandfather Choi Jong-hyun reappeared at the venue through 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 sitting in the audience, eldest daughter Choi Yoon-jung would continue to lead SK Inc.'s Growth Support Division the following year, while eldest son Choi In-geon would leave SK in the same summer to join McKinsey. Second daughter Choi Min-jung was not present that day. She would return to the same hotel as the founder of her own AI medical company more than ten months later to hold her wedding ceremony and observe a moment of silence for fallen Korean War veterans before the ceremony began.

The more SK Hynix resembles a global geopolitical asset, the less its heirs resemble traditional heirs in the conventional sense.

Choi Yoon-jung's visibility no longer comes from marriage or a family portrait, but from whether she can present SK's next growth story beyond semiconductors; Choi Min-jung's position is not in SK Hynix's factories or headquarters, but amidst the Washington policy circle, neighbors to the Pentagon, spouse of a U.S. Marine, and balancing AI medical entrepreneurship. She herself is the personification of this company's industry attribute, revalued by the AI era. Choi In-geon should have been the presumed heir apparent according to the old script, but his silence indicates that mere primogeniture and familial academic continuity are no longer sufficient to automatically confer succession legitimacy.

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

At the 50th anniversary commemorative event, Choi Tae-won told his children, "Remember the source as you drink the water." For SK's heirs, inheritance is not a key, not a shareholding table, but being brought to the "water source," seeing how the previous generation fetched water, and then being asked to dig a new well in their own era.

It's just that their era is no longer their grandfather's era of industrial patriotism or their father's era of political-business marriages and conglomerate expansion. At the same moment SK Hynix is propelled by the AI cycle to become a global supply chain hub, Choi's three children are also sent to the forefront of AI labs, the Washington social circle, and Wall Street boardrooms. What they inherit is a whole set of questions from the global AI industry game, not any single answer.

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