On November 26, 2024, at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Gwangjin-gu, Seoul, the 50th anniversary ceremony of the Korea Higher Education Foundation. The lights in the venue dimmed, and an AI-generated video appeared on the screen, showing Choi Jong-hyun, the second-generation chairman of SK Group and founder of the foundation.
He suddenly passed away in Los Angeles in 1998, 26 years ago. In the AI-generated video, he speaks again, telling the young people who received corporate scholarships to study abroad back then: "Plant a seed in your heart; may you dream of growing into a mighty tree. We are willing to wait until the seed you planted becomes a tree."
Seated at the central table below were his son, Choi Tae-won, current chairman of SK Group and leader of South Korea’s second-largest conglomerate, along with the two children he brought to witness the moment: his eldest daughter, Choi Yoon-jung, and his eldest son, Choi In-geun. Choi later explained to the media why he brought them: “This is our legacy, so they need to be trained—to see what their grandfather did and what their father did.” He said he “required them to attend out of obligation.” He also referenced the proverb “Remember the source of the water” during the event, emphasizing that those who benefit should remember those who first dug the well.
SK Hynix has risen 700% over the past year, with its market cap just surpassing 100 quadrillion won, overtaking longtime rival Samsung Electronics to become the most valuable asset in Korean conglomerate history. As the AI cycle has propelled Hynix to the most prominent position in Korea’s capital markets, outsiders looking for the company’s successor find that SK’s third generation has not taken the traditional chaebol script. The eldest daughter entered the group’s executive narrative first, the second daughter is most closely connected to Hynix, Washington, and the U.S. military network, while the eldest son—who appears most like the heir—is the quietest of all.
After Hynix's surge, the old script of the Korean conglomerate heir no longer works.
The succession of South Korean conglomerates has historically revolved around four key themes: the eldest son, equity ownership, marital connections, and paternal approval. Samsung, Hyundai, and Hanwha have all followed this same script.
In October 2022, Lee Jae-yong, the third-generation leader of Samsung Group, was officially appointed as chairman, completing the generational transition. His eldest son, Lee Ji-ho, recently enrolled at the Korea Naval Academy to prepare for mandatory military service—a move that itself reflects the “succession training” typical of Korea’s next-generation conglomerate heirs. Hyundai Motor Group followed slightly later, with its third-generation leader, Chung Eui-sun, assuming control in 2020. Meanwhile, Hanwha Group saw its chairman, Kim Seung-youn, transfer half of the holding company’s shares to his three sons in 2025, effectively handing over control to current vice chairman Kim Dong-gwan, who is 42 and has long been widely recognized as the eldest son.
The core of this script is "enabling the public and the market to recognize early on who the heir is." From Lee Jae-yong to Jeong Ui-sun to Kim Dong-gwan, regardless of differences in personality, ability, or path, they have all been collectively placed by their fathers, families, and the media into the position of "successor," gradually moving toward that chair through equity, military service, education, and professional training.
SK is different. Choi Tae-won and his former wife, Ro Soo-young, have three children: eldest daughter Choi Yoon-jung (born 1989), second daughter Choi Min-jung (born 1991), and eldest son Choi In-geun (born 1995). All three are currently involved with the group’s future, but none can fill the role of “crown prince.”
Choi Yoon-jung was early dubbed by Korean financial media as “the most obvious successor,” but she did not work in semiconductors—she worked at SK Bioscience; Choi Min-jung handled international trade and policy responses at SK Hynix’s U.S. subsidiary, but in 2022 she left Hynix to pursue medical entrepreneurship in San Francisco; Choi In-geun most resembled the traditional male heir, yet in July 2025 he left SK E&S to join McKinsey’s Seoul office. According to the惯例 of Korea’s third-generation conglomerate heirs, consulting firms represent a path of “external seasoning,” not a succession directive.
Choi Tae-won was very clear in a 2021 interview with BBC Korean: “Nothing has been decided yet. My children will also have to work hard to earn opportunities. My son is still young and will live his own life—I won’t force him.” When asked whether his children’s involvement in management would require board approval, he replied, “Yes.”
This statement turns inheritance into a public test of legitimacy. All three children must prove themselves, and what they can now offer as proof is no longer shares, marital ties, or birth order.
Choi Yoon-jung: The "most obvious successor," from the lab to the boardroom
On June 28, 2024, at the SKMS Research Institute in Ilsan, Gyeonggi Province, SK Group held its management strategy meeting. Attendees included the CEOs of major subsidiaries such as SK, SK Innovation, SK Telecom, and SK Hynix, along with key family members of the group, totaling over 30 people. Choi Tae-won participated via video conference while on a business trip in the United States. The meeting, described by Korean media as an intense discussion driven by a sense of crisis, was scheduled for one night and two days, with the first day’s agenda left open-ended—no predetermined end time—until a clear direction was established.
Choi Yoo-jung sat at the conference table. She was the only participant attending in her capacity as a child of Choi Tae-won, and also the youngest executive within the SK Group. The media interpreted her "sudden appearance" as part of a leadership training program.
To understand how she ended up at that table, rewind to her training. In August 1989, Choi Yoon-jung was born at the Seoul Regional Hospital of the Republic of Korea Army. At the time, her grandfather, Roh Tae-woo, was the sitting president of South Korea. She spent her childhood and high school years attending an international school in Beijing, then went on to the University of Chicago for her undergraduate degree in biology—the same university where her parents had studied abroad. During undergrad, she also worked as a researcher at the Chicago Institute for Brain Science and gained research experience at Harvard’s Department of Physical Chemistry. After graduation, she spent two years as a consultant at Bain & Company. This is the standard training path for a third-generation Korean chaebol heir.
Choi Yoon-jung (left), Choi Tae-won (center), and Choi Min-jung (right)
In 2017, she joined SK Bioscience as Head of Strategic Investment. But in 2019, she made an unexpected decision for an heir: she temporarily left SK to return to Stanford to pursue a master’s degree in biomedical informatics—specifically in computational biology, not general biology. Two years later, she returned to SK to resume strategic work while simultaneously enrolling in a Ph.D. program in biological sciences at Seoul National University. She is currently still pursuing her Ph.D., specializing in genetics and development.
In January 2024, she was promoted to Head of the Biopharmaceutical Business Development Division (equivalent to Vice President), leading the introduction of radiopharmaceutical therapy (RPT) and radioactive isotope supply contracts—core pipelines for SK Biopharmaceuticals’ transition from traditional neurological drugs to precision medicine in the AI era. By the end of the same year, Choi Tae-won established a new “Growth Support Division” at SK Inc., SK Group’s top-tier holding company, and entrusted her with oversight of mid- to long-term planning, portfolio management, global expansion, and new business evaluation.
Her marriage also deviated from the old conglomerate playbook. In October 2017, she married Yoon Do-yeon, a colleague from Bain. Yoon graduated from Seoul National University’s Department of Business Administration and later became co-representative of More (모레), a South Korean startup specializing in AI infrastructure, developing software platforms for AI model training and computational parallelization. The company received strategic investment from KT in 2021 and was valued at approximately KRW 350 billion in 2025. This was not a traditional conglomerate marriage, nor was it the “marrying a regular employee” narrative often portrayed in Chinese media. Instead, it represented a new form of elite networking: the conglomerate’s eldest daughter marrying a tech entrepreneur of the AI era.
In the decades-long narratives of female succession within conglomerates like Samsung and CJ, daughters have often been seen through roles such as museum patrons, hotel operators, charity foundation leaders, luxury retail figures, or as part of dowries. But Choi Yoo-jung’s position is different. She sits at the table where SK Group determines its future direction. Her visibility is not defined by marriage, art, or image-making, but by her scientific training, consulting experience, doctoral thesis, strategic investments, and executive roles within the group.
The way the chaebol daughter is seen is changing. But Choi Yoon-jung rarely speaks publicly. She is discussed by Korean media with the label "most like a successor," yet her personal story remains quiet in public reports.
Choi Min-jung: The Global Successor of Warships, Washington, and Hynix
On October 13, 2024, at the same Waldorf Astoria Hotel owned by the SK Group, Choi Min-jung, the second daughter of Choi Tae-won, married Kevin Hwang, a Chinese-American entrepreneur.
Approximately 500 guests attended the wedding, including Lee Jae-yong, Ku Kwang-mo, Kim Dong-gwan, and other members of the SK family. Choi Tae-won and Ro So-young appeared together in the same space for the first time since their 1.38 trillion won divorce lawsuit, sitting side by side on the bride’s side of the parents’ seating area. Beside them was the dog jointly cared for by Choi Min-jung and Kevin Hwang.
Choi Min-jung's wedding venue
After the groom entered, Choi Min-jung walked into the venue alone, without being accompanied by her father. There was no officiant at the ceremony. Choi Yoon-jung, the bride’s sister, delivered a toast, and the groom’s brother spoke in English. Before the ceremony began, all attendees observed a moment of silence in honor of Korean and American fallen comrades. One side of the venue featured an empty table adorned with medals, dog tags, roses, and a lemon—following the U.S. military tradition known as the Missing Man Table, commemorating missing and fallen service members.
Choi Min-jung, born in 1991, attended the Affiliated High School of Renmin University of China for secondary school and was admitted to Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management to study business. Among South Korea’s chaebol third generation, it is extremely rare to come to China for undergraduate studies—most either attend Ivy League schools or stay at top universities in Korea. During her time studying in Beijing, she reportedly funded her living expenses through scholarships, part-time work at convenience stores, and income from tutoring at a prep academy, receiving almost no financial support from her parents. This “path of self-reliance” is an exceptionally rare marker among children of South Korea’s chaebol families.
In 2014, she made a decision that left all Korean media puzzled: applying to the 117th class of Korean Navy Officer Cadets. While military service is mandatory for Korean men, it is entirely voluntary for women—making her the first woman from a Korean chaebol family to voluntarily enlist. During her interview, she said she was inspired by the spirit of challenge and leadership of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton in 1915. Throughout the 11-week training period before commissioning, she repeatedly told visiting family and friends the same phrase: “I am proud to be a daughter of the Republic of Korea. After this training, my pride has grown even greater.”
Choi Min-jung's military photo
She was assigned to the ROKS Chungmugong Yi Sun-sin (DDH-975) as an Operations Information Assistant Officer. In December 2015, she deployed with the Cheonghae Unit’s 19th rotation to the Gulf of Aden near Somalia to conduct anti-piracy escort missions. Prior to her retirement, she served as a Command and Control Room Status Officer at the Headquarters of the Second Western Sea Fleet, and retired on November 30, 2017, with the rank of Navy Lieutenant.
After retiring, she returned to China and worked in private equity at an investment firm for about a year, then went to Georgetown University in the United States to pursue a master’s degree in international business policy. In August 2019, she joined INTRA, the department responsible for international cooperation at SK Hynix, where her work involved international trade and policy response, splitting her time between Washington and Seoul. This was her direct connection to SK Hynix—though not as an engineer, product manager, or factory operator; she worked in policy. Later, she transitioned to SK Hynix’s U.S. corporate strategy department, focusing on mergers and acquisitions and investments.
She met her husband, Kevin Hwang, during this same period. They were neighbors in the DuPont Circle area of Washington.
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 candidate, and from October 2020, he worked in South Korea for approximately nine months as a logistics planning officer with U.S. forces stationed there. Both have military backgrounds, and South Korean media have described their relationship as strengthened by their shared military experience.
In February 2022, Choi Min-jung took a leave of absence from SK Hynix and became an unpaid advisor at Done Global, a remote healthcare startup in San Francisco; South Korean media later revealed she had actually served as CFO. A year later, she co-founded Integral Health with scholars from Yale University School of Medicine’s psychiatry department, serving as CEO to develop AI-driven integrated care and behavioral health solutions.
Her current LinkedIn headline is “Founder of Integral Health | Investor in Healthcare & AI | Veteran | 2x Exits.” The label “Veteran” remains prominently displayed.
The same theme recurs throughout Choi Min-jung’s life: the military. From Shackleton to the Gulf of Aden, from Washington SK Hynix INTRA to marrying a former U.S. Marine Corps captain, she did not follow her sister into SK’s internal management or marry into a prominent Korean chaebol family as tradition dictated. Yet she embodied the new era in which SK Hynix found itself. Semiconductor companies, amid the AI cycle, have become increasingly like geopolitical entities—navigating U.S. policy, trade controls, supply chain security, and capital mergers. Choi Min-jung’s career grew precisely along this axis.
Choi In-geun: Why is the person most like an heir the quietest?
Choi In-geun's story begins in a hospital room.
In 2003, the SK Group was embroiled in an accounting scandal, leading to Choi Tae-won's imprisonment. That same year, his and Ro Soo-young's younger son, Choi In-geun, was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, and doctors said he would need lifelong insulin injections. Choi In-geun was 8 years old at the time.
During that time, No Soo-young, the daughter of a former South Korean president, moved into the pediatric ward of Seoul National University Hospital with her children. At night, while Choi In-geun slept in bed, she would sit beside him alone, watching over him. Later, in an interview, No Soo-young recalled that her son continued to struggle fiercely with diabetes until he was 17, but he was a cheerful boy who often served at the choir in the church near their home, performed special songs using beatbox during worship, and in the evenings, joined his second sister, Choi Min-jung, in copying the Bible together.
Choi In-geun’s educational path differed from that of his two older sisters. He first attended a non-traditional high school in South Korea known for its innovative education, and later transferred to a school in Hawaii. His mother, Roh Soo-young, believed that “there’s no need to stress about forcing children into the same universities as everyone else,” and advocated for creative, unique approaches to parenting. During Choi In-geun’s high school years in Hawaii, his mother lived there for over two years to accompany him.
He later enrolled at Brown University in the United States to study physics, following in his father’s footsteps. Choi Tae-won also majored in physics at Korea University, and Choi Jae-won, Choi Tae-won’s younger brother and vice chairman of SK Group, is also a graduate of Brown University’s physics department. This is the only clear academic continuity in the family. The relationship between Choi In-geun and Choi Tae-won is strong; they communicate frequently, often play tennis together, and have been photographed chatting with their arms around each other outside a restaurant outside Seoul.
Choi In-geun (left) with his father, Choi Tae-won (right)
After graduation, he completed an internship at Boston Consulting Group and joined SK E&S’s strategic planning team in September 2020 to work on natural gas market expansion. In 2025, he left SK and joined McKinsey’s Seoul office. Korean media have framed this move as a typical path of “third-generation conglomerate scions gaining external experience,” though he has made no public statements on the matter.
According to the old script of Korean conglomerates, Choi In-geun should have been the default successor. He is the eldest son and has continued the family’s academic lineage, with a career path from SK to McKinsey similar to that of Lee Jae-yong and Jeong Ui-sun in their time. Yet, he has never made any public statements, the contents of his petition in his parents’ divorce case have not been disclosed, and he currently holds no shares in the SK Group. He is like someone who was assigned a role in the old script but refuses to step into it.
Choi In-geun is the most like an heir among the three children, and also the most quiet.
The Family in Court
No matter how independent their personal histories, the three children could not escape the narrative of their parents’ marriage. They did not speak out through interviews or social media, but entered the public story of their parents’ marriage through legal documents.
Choi Tae-won and Roh Soo-young were married in 1988 at the Blue House, with the then-Prime Minister of South Korea serving as the officiant. Roh Soo-young’s father, Roh Tae-woo, became the newly elected President of South Korea that same year. In 2015, Choi Tae-won published a "Confession of a Born-Out-of-Wedlock Child" in the Chosun Ilbo, publicly acknowledging that he had a daughter with his live-in partner, Kim Hee-young, and requesting a divorce from Roh Soo-young, who refused. In 2017, Choi Tae-won filed again for divorce mediation, leading to litigation. In 2019, Roh Soo-young countersued for divorce, seeking compensation and division of assets corresponding to shares in SK Corporation.
Choi Tae-won and Ro So-young in their youth
This lawsuit has drawn sustained international media attention for three reasons: the potential record-breaking size of the division amount in South Korean court history, the involvement of funds from the former president’s family in SK Group’s early capital structure, and the possibility that Choi Tae-won’s actual control over SK Holdings could be undermined by the massive division.
In 2022, the Seoul Family Court’s first-instance ruling ordered Choi Tae-won to transfer 66.5 billion KRW in assets to Ro Soo-young, along with approximately 310,000 shares of SK Holdings, elevating her from a minor shareholder with 0.01% ownership to the company’s fourth-largest shareholder. In May 2024, the appellate court revised the ruling, increasing the asset division to 1.38 trillion KRW—the largest single divorce asset division in Asian legal history. In October 2025, South Korea’s Supreme Court overturned the appellate court’s asset division ruling and remanded the case for retrial.
In May 2023, the three biological children submitted petitions consecutively over three days to the Family Division 2 of the Seoul High Court, which was handling the appeal of their parents’ divorce case. On the 15th, the second daughter, Choi Min-jung, filed first; on the 16th, the eldest son, Choi In-geun; and on the 17th, the eldest daughter, Choi Yoon-jung. The three children appeared collectively in their parents’ divorce case documents as legal filings, but what they wrote and which side they supported have not been disclosed to this day.
At Choi Min-jung’s 2024 wedding, Choi Tae-won and Ro Soo-young appeared together in the same space for the first time, sitting side by side at the bride’s parents’ table amid a 1.38-trillion-won divorce lawsuit. After the ceremony, family members from both sides walked around the tables to greet guests. This brief, ceremonial coexistence was the final family portrait the three children could arrange for their parents after the structural collapse of their marriage.
Like most conglomerate families, the third generation of SK inherited not just a company or a shareholding table.
When Hynix becomes a geopolitical asset, inheritance is no longer a family matter.
Return to the commemorative venue in 2024.
Grandfather Choi Jong-hyun returned to the scene via AI-generated imagery, speaking to his grandchildren. Father Choi Tae-won told the children that this was a family legacy and that they must undergo training. Among the children seated in the audience, the eldest daughter, Choi Yoon-jung, would continue to lead SK Inc.’s Growth Support Division the following year, while the eldest son, Choi In-geun, would leave SK that same summer to join McKinsey. The second daughter, Choi Min-jung, was not present that day. More than ten months later, she would return to the same hotel as the founder of her own AI healthcare company to hold her wedding, and before the ceremony began, she would observe a moment of silence in honor of Korean and American allies.
The more SK Hynix resembles a global geopolitical asset, the less its heirs resemble traditional heirs.
Choi Yoo-jung’s visibility no longer comes from her marriage or family portrait, but from whether she can deliver SK’s next growth story beyond chips; Choi Min-jung’s position is not in SK Hynix’s factories or headquarters, but in Washington’s policy circles, among neighbors of the Pentagon, with her husband in the U.S. Marine Corps, and in AI healthcare startups. She herself is a human mirror of the company’s industrial identity being revalued in the AI era. Choi In-kyun should have been the default heir in this old script, but his silence reveals that merely being the eldest son and maintaining familial academic continuity is no longer enough to automatically generate legitimacy for succession.
The marriage alliances of Korea’s chaebols have not disappeared; they have simply shifted from the presidential palace and domestic chaebol circles to Silicon Valley AI infrastructure startups and Washington-based U.S. Marine Corps reservists. Choi Yoo-jung married Yoon Dae-yeon, co-representative of More, while Choi Min-jung married Kevin Hwang, a former Pentagon official. It is still elite intermarriage, but the elites are no longer on the same map.
Choi Tae-won told his children at the 50th anniversary event, "Remember the source of your water"; for the SK family heirs, inheritance is not a key, not a shareholding chart—it is being led to the "source," shown how the previous generation dug for water, and then being asked to dig their own well in their own era.
It was their own era—not the time of their grandfather, when industry served the nation, nor the time of their father, when political and business alliances drove corporate expansion. At the very moment SK Hynix was propelled to the center of the global supply chain by the AI cycle, the three崔 children were sent to cutting-edge AI labs, Washington’s social circles, and Wall Street conference tables. What they inherited was an entire set of challenges in the global AI industry—not any simple answer.
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