November 26, 2024, Walkerhill Hotel, Gwangjin-gu, Seoul, at the 50th-anniversary ceremony of the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies. The lights dimmed, and an AI-generated video appeared on the screen. The image showed Choi Jong-hyun, the second-generation chairman of the SK Group and founder of the foundation.

He passed away suddenly in Los Angeles in 1998, 26 years ago. In the AI video, he spoke again, addressing the students who had once studied abroad on the foundation's scholarships: 'Plant a seed in your heart, and may you have the dream to grow into a great tree; we are willing to wait until the seed you plant grows into a tree.'

Sitting at the central table in the audience were his son, Choi Tae-won, the current chairman of the SK Group and head of South Korea's second-largest chaebol, along with his two children whom he had brought to witness this moment: his eldest daughter Choi Yun-jung and his eldest son Choi In-geun. Choi Tae-won later explained to the media why he brought them: 'This is our legacy, so they need to be trained. They need to see what their grandfather did and what their father did.' He said he had 'obligatorily required them to attend.' At the event, he also mentioned 'remembering the source when drinking water': when you drink water, remember where it came from; beneficiaries should also remember those who first dug the well.

SK Hynix's stock price rose 700% over the past year, and its market capitalization just surpassed 1,000 trillion won, surpassing its old rival Samsung Electronics to become the most valuable asset in the history of Korean chaebols. As the AI cycle pushes Hynix into the spotlight of the Korean capital market, outsiders looking for the successor to this company found that the SK Group's third generation is not positioned according to the traditional chaebol script. The eldest daughter was the first to enter the group's executive narrative; the second daughter has the deepest connections with Hynix, Washington, and American military networks; while the one who seems most like the heir, the eldest son, is actually the quietest.

After Hynix's Soaring Rise, the Old Script for Korean Chaebol Succession Has Failed

Korean chaebol succession, in the past, generally revolved around four keywords: eldest son, equity, marriage connections, and father's approval. Samsung, Hyundai, and Hanwha have all repeated this script.

In October 2022, Samsung Group's third-generation leader, Lee Jae-yong, was officially appointed chairman, completing the generational handover at Samsung; his eldest son, Lee Ji-ho, recently enrolled in the Korean Naval Academy to prepare for his mandatory military service in advance, which itself is a 'succession training move' for the new generation of Korean chaebols. The Hyundai Motor Group followed slightly later, with the third-generation Chung Eui-sun taking the helm in 2020. Hanwha Group, in 2025, saw Chairman Kim Seung-youn transfer half of the holding company's shares to his three sons, essentially handing over the empire to current Vice Chairman Kim Dong-gwan, who is 42 years old and whose status as the eldest son has never been doubted by the outside world.

The core of this script is 'letting the public and the market recognize the crown prince in advance.' From Lee Jae-yong to Chung Eui-sun to Kim Dong-gwan, regardless of differences in personality, ability, or career path, they have all been placed in the 'successor' position by their fathers, families, and the media, gradually moving toward that chair through equity transfers, military service, education, and professional training.

SK is different. Choi Tae-won and his ex-wife, Roh Soh-yeong, have three children: eldest daughter Choi Yun-jung (born 1989), second daughter Choi Min-jung (born 1991), and eldest son Choi In-geun (born 1995). All three children are currently connected to the group's future, but none fit neatly into the 'crown prince' position.

Choi Yun-jung was called by the Korean financial press 'the most obvious succession candidate' early on, but she works not in chips, but at SK Biopharmaceuticals. Choi Min-jung once handled international commerce and policy at SK Hynix's U.S. subsidiary, but in 2022, she left Hynix and moved to San Francisco to start a healthcare venture. Choi In-geun most resembles the traditional male heir, but in July 2025, he left SK E&S to join McKinsey & Company's Seoul office. According to the conventions for Korean chaebol third generations, a consulting firm is a 'path for external experience,' not a succession directive.

Choi Tae-won himself made it very clear in a 2021 interview with BBC Korea: 'It's not decided yet. My children also have to work hard to earn the opportunity. My son is still young, he will live his own life, I will not force him.' When asked whether the board's agreement would be needed for his children to participate in management, he answered, 'Yes.'

This stance transforms succession from a family matter into a public legitimacy test. All three children must prove themselves, and what they can use as proof is no longer just equity, marriage connections, or eldest son status.

Choi Yun-jung: 'The Most Obvious Heir,' From Laboratory to Boardroom

June 28, 2024, SKMS Research Institute, Icheon, Gyeonggi-do, SK Group's Business Strategy Meeting. Attendees included CEOs of major subsidiaries like SK, SK Innovation, SK Telecom, and SK Hynix, plus key family members of the group, totaling over 30 people. Choi Tae-won was on a business trip to the U.S. at the time and attended via video. The meeting was described by Korean media as an intensive discussion with a sense of crisis, scheduled for one night and two days, with 'no preset end time' on the first day until a direction was formed.

Choi Yun-jung sat at the meeting table. She was the only person attending in her capacity as Choi Tae-won's child, and the youngest executive within the SK Group. Media interpreted her 'sudden appearance' as part of management training.

To understand how she got to that table, we need to rewind and look at her training. Born in August 1989 at the Armed Forces Seoul District Hospital, her maternal grandfather Roh Tae-woo was the incumbent President of South Korea at the time. She spent her childhood and middle school years at an international school in Beijing, then went to the University of Chicago for her undergraduate degree in biology—the same university her parents had attended. During her undergraduate years, she also worked for two years as a researcher at the Chicago Brain Science Institute and had research experience at Harvard's Physical Chemistry Research Institute. After graduation, she spent two years as a consultant at Bain & Company. This is standard training for Korean chaebol third generations.

Choi Yun-jung (left) with Choi Tae-won (center) and Choi Min-jung (right)

In 2017, she joined SK Biopharmaceuticals as the head of the Strategic Investment Team. But in 2019, she made a decision not typical for an heir: she temporarily left SK to return to Stanford University for a master's degree in biomedical informatics. This is a computational biology direction, not ordinary biology. Two years later, she returned to SK to continue in strategy, while simultaneously pursuing a Ph.D. in bioscience at Seoul National University. She is still in the Ph.D. program, majoring in genetics and developmental biology.

In January 2024, she was promoted to head of SK Biopharmaceuticals' Business Development Division (Vice President level), leading the introduction of radiopharmaceutical therapy (RPT) and radioisotope supply contracts. This is the core pipeline for SK Biopharmaceuticals' transformation from traditional neurological drugs to precision medicine in the AI era. At the end of the same year, Choi Tae-won established a new 'Growth Support Department' within the top-tier holding company SK Inc., responsible for mid-to-long-term planning, portfolio management, global expansion, and new business evaluation, and placed her directly in charge.

Her marriage also falls outside the old chaebol script. In October 2017, she married her Bain colleague, Yoon Do-yeon. Yoon Do-yeon graduated from Seoul National University's Business Administration department and later served as co-CEO of More (모레), a Korean AI infrastructure startup. The company focuses on AI model training and computational parallelization software platforms, received strategic investment from KT in 2021, and had an estimated valuation of around 350 billion won in 2025. This is not a traditional chaebol alliance, nor is it the 'marrying an ordinary employee' often mentioned in Chinese media. It is a new combination of elite networks: a chaebol eldest daughter marrying a tech entrepreneur in the AI era.

In the narratives of female succession for chaebols like Samsung and CJ over the past decades, daughters were mostly seen through art museums, hotels, charitable foundations, luxury retail, or children's dowries. Choi Yun-jung's position is different. She sits at the SK Group's decision-making table for future direction. Her visibility is established not by marriage, art, or image-building, but by scientific training, consulting experience, doctoral research, strategic investments, and corporate executive positions.

The ways in which chaebol daughters are seen are changing. But Choi Yun-jung herself rarely speaks publicly. She is discussed by Korean media with the label 'most like a succession candidate,' yet her personal story remains quiet in public reports.

Choi Min-jung: Warships, Washington, and Hynix's Global Successor

October 13, 2024, again at the SK Group's own Walkerhill Hotel, Choi Tae-won's second daughter, Choi Min-jung, and Chinese-American entrepreneur Kevin Hwang held their special wedding.

Approximately 500 people attended the wedding, including Lee Jae-yong, Koo Kwang-mo, Kim Dong-gwan, and other SK family members. Choi Tae-won and Roh Soh-yeong appeared in the same space for the first time since the 1.38 trillion won divorce lawsuit, sitting side by side in the bride's parents' seats. Nearby was also the dog co-raised by Choi Min-jung and Kevin Hwang.

Choi Min-jung's wedding scene

After the groom's entrance, Choi Min-jung walked into the venue alone, not escorted by her father. There was no master of ceremonies for the entire wedding. Her sister, Choi Yun-jung, gave a congratulatory speech, and the groom's brother gave a speech in English. Before the ceremony began, the entire audience observed a moment of silence for Korean and American comrades-in-arms. A side table was set with medals, dog tags, roses, and a lemon—this is the U.S. military tradition of the Missing Man Table, honoring missing and fallen soldiers.

Choi Min-jung was born in 1991. She attended middle school at the Affiliated High School of Renmin University of China, then passed the entrance exam for Peking University's Guanghua School of Management for her undergraduate degree in business administration. Among Korean chaebol third generations, studying in China for an undergraduate degree is almost unheard of; others either go to Ivy League schools or stay at prestigious Korean universities. While studying in Beijing, she reportedly self-funded her living expenses through scholarships, part-time work at convenience stores, and earnings as a preparatory academy lecturer, receiving almost no financial support from her parents. This 'self-reliant path' is an extremely rare marker among Korean chaebol offspring.

In 2014, she made a decision that puzzled all Korean media: she applied for the 117th class of the Korean Naval Academy cadet program. Military service is mandatory for Korean men but completely voluntary for women; this was the first time a female member of a Korean chaebol family voluntarily enlisted. During her interview, she said she was inspired by the challenging spirit and leadership of the 1915 Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton. During the 11-week training period before commissioning, she often told family and friends who visited her the same words: 'I am proud to be born a daughter of the Republic of Korea. After the training period, I have an even greater sense of pride.'

Choi Min-jung in military uniform

She was assigned to the destroyer ROKS Chungmugong Yi Sun-sin (DDH-975) as an assistant operations information officer. In December 2015, she deployed with the Cheonghae Unit, 19th contingent, to the Gulf of Aden near Somalia for anti-piracy escort missions. Before discharge, she served as a situation officer in the Command and Control Room of the Combat Unit Headquarters of the Second Fleet Command in the West Sea, and was discharged on November 30, 2017, with the rank of Lieutenant in the Navy.

After discharge, she returned to China and worked for about a year in private equity at an investment firm, then went to Georgetown University in the U.S. for a master's in international business policy. In August 2019, she joined SK Hynix's External Cooperation General Management Department (INTRA), working on international commerce and policy response, commuting between Washington D.C. and Seoul. This was her direct connection point with SK Hynix. But she wasn't an engineer, product manager, or factory operations manager. She worked on policy, later moving to the strategy department of SK Hynix's U.S. subsidiary, responsible for M&A and investments.

She and her husband, Kevin Hwang, met during this period. In the DuPont Circle area of Washington, they were neighbors.

Kevin Hwang was born in Indiana, USA, holds a Harvard BA and a Stanford MBA, joined the U.S. Marine Corps as a commissioned officer in 2016, and worked in South Korea for about 9 months starting in October 2020 as a logistics plans officer for the U.S. Forces Korea. Both had military backgrounds, described by Korean media as 'shared military experience deepening their relationship.'

In February 2022, Choi Min-jung took a leave of absence from SK Hynix and went to the San Francisco-based telehealth startup Done Global as an unpaid advisor; Korean media later disclosed she actually served as CFO. A year later, she co-founded Integral Health with scholars from Yale University School of Medicine's psychiatry field, serving as 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' label remains in the most prominent position.

A recurring theme runs through Choi Min-jung's life: the military. From Shackleton to the Gulf of Aden, from SK Hynix INTRA in Washington to marrying a former U.S. Marine Corps captain. She hasn't entered SK's internal management like her sister, nor has she married into a Korean elite family according to the traditional chaebol script. But she personifies the new-era position that SK Hynix occupies. Semiconductor companies in the AI cycle are increasingly becoming geopolitical entities, dealing with U.S. policy, trade controls, supply chain security, and capital M&A. Choi Min-jung's resume is precisely aligned with that line.

Choi In-geun: The One Who Most Resembles the Heir, Why is He the Quietest?

Choi In-geun's story begins in a hospital room.

In 2003, the SK Group was embroiled in an accounting fraud scandal, leading to Choi Tae-won's imprisonment. The same year, his and Roh Soh-yeong's youngest son, Choi In-geun, was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, with doctors saying he would need lifelong insulin injections. Choi In-geun was 8 years old.

During that period, Roh Soh-yeong, the daughter of former President Roh Tae-woo, moved into the pediatric ward of Seoul National University Hospital with her child. At night, when Choi In-geun slept in bed, she would sit alone beside him watching. Roh Soh-yeong later recalled in an interview that her son was still struggling hard with diabetes at age 17, but he was a very sunny boy, often serving in the choir at a nearby church, using beatboxing for special songs during worship services, and copying the Bible with his second sister, Choi Min-jung, in the evenings.

Choi In-geun's educational path differs from both his sisters. He first attended a non-traditional middle school in South Korea known for innovative education, later transferred to a school in Hawaii. His mother Roh Soh-yeong's educational philosophy was 'no need to be anxious about cramming children into the same universities as everyone else,' but rather to explore different, creative parenting methods. During Choi In-geun's high school years in Hawaii, Roh Soh-yeong lived in Hawaii for over two years, accompanying him.

He later entered Brown University in the U.S. to study physics, following in his father's footsteps. Choi Tae-won also majored in physics at Korea University, and Choi Tae-won's brother, SK Group Vice Chairman Choi Jae-won, is also a Brown University physics graduate. This is the only clear line of academic continuity in the family. Choi In-geun has a good relationship with his father, communicating frequently, often playing tennis together, and has been photographed talking with his arm around his father's shoulder in front of a restaurant in the Seoul suburbs.

Choi In-geun (left) with father Choi Tae-won (right)

After graduation, he interned at The Boston Consulting Group for a period and joined the Strategic Planning Team at SK E&S in September 2020, working on natural gas market expansion. In 2025, he left SK to join McKinsey & Company's Seoul office. Korean media interpreted this move as a standard 'external experience path' for chaebol third generations, but he himself has made no public statements.

According to the old chaebol script, Choi In-geun should be the default successor. He is the eldest son, inherits the family's academic continuity, and his trajectory from SK to McKinsey is similar to the training paths of Lee Jae-yong and Chung Eui-sun in their time. But he has no reported public statements; the contents of the petition he submitted in his parents' divorce case remain undisclosed; and he currently holds no shares in the SK Group. He seems like someone who was written into a position by the old script but refuses to walk onto that stage.

Choi In-geun is the one among these three children who most resembles the heir, and also the quietest.

The Family in Court

No matter how independent the resumes of the three children, they cannot avoid their parents' marriage. They haven't spoken through interviews or social media, but they entered the public narrative of their parents' marriage through legal documents.

Choi Tae-won and Roh Soh-yeong held their wedding at the Blue House in 1988, with the then Prime Minister of South Korea officiating. Roh Soh-yeong's father was Roh Tae-woo, who became President of South Korea that same year. In 2015, Choi Tae-won published a 'love child confession' in the Hankook Ilbo, publicly admitting to having a daughter with his live-in partner Kim Hee-young and requesting a divorce from Roh Soh-yeong, which she refused. In 2017, Choi Tae-won again applied for divorce mediation, leading to litigation. In 2019, Roh Soh-yeong countersued for divorce, demanding alimony and property division corresponding to SK Inc. shares.

Choi Tae-won and Roh Soh-yeong in their younger years

This lawsuit attracted sustained international media attention for three reasons: the division amount could set a record in Korean court history; the former president's family funds were implicated in the SK Group's early capital structure; and Choi Tae-won's actual control over SK Holdings could be shaken due to the massive division.

In 2022, the Seoul Family Court's first-instance ruling ordered Choi Tae-won to divide 66.5 billion won in property with Roh Soh-yeong and give her approximately 310,000 SK Holdings shares, making her the company's fourth-largest shareholder, up from a marginal 0.01% stake. In May 2024, the second-instance ruling changed the division amount to 1.38 trillion won, the largest single divorce property division in Asian legal history. In October 2025, the Korean Supreme Court overturned the property division part of the second-instance ruling and sent the case back for retrial.

In May 2023, the three legitimate children submitted petitions to the Seoul High Court's Family Division 2, which was hearing the second instance of their parents' divorce case, on three consecutive days. The second daughter, Choi Min-jung, submitted hers on the 15th; the eldest son, Choi In-geun, on the 16th; and the eldest daughter, Choi Yun-jung, on the 17th. The three children collectively appeared in their parents' divorce case files through legal documents, but what exactly they wrote and which side they took has not been disclosed to this day.

At Choi Min-jung's wedding in 2024, Choi Tae-won and Roh Soh-yeong appeared in the same space for the first time against the backdrop of the 1.38 trillion won divorce lawsuit, sitting side by side in the bride's parents' seats. After the ceremony, both families' relatives circled the tables together to greet the guests. This brief, ceremonial co-presence was the last family scene the three children could arrange for their parents after the structural failure of their marriage.

Like most chaebol families, what the SK Group's third generation inherits is never just a company or a list of shareholdings.

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

Returning to that 2024 anniversary event.

Grandfather Choi Jong-hyun returned to the scene via AI video, speaking to his grandchildren. Father Choi Tae-won told the children this was the family legacy, and they needed to be trained. Among the children sitting in the audience, the eldest daughter Choi Yun-jung would continue to lead SK Inc.'s Growth Support Department the following year, while the eldest son Choi In-geun would leave SK to join McKinsey in the summer of the same year. The second daughter, Choi Min-jung, was not present that day. Ten months later, she would return to the same hotel as the founder of her own AI healthcare company for her wedding, observing a moment of silence for Korean and American comrades-in-arms before the ceremony began.

The more SK Hynix resembles a global geopolitical asset, the less SK's successors resemble traditional heirs.

Choi Yun-jung's visibility no longer comes from marriage or family portraits, 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 the Washington policy circle, the Pentagon neighborhood, her U.S. Marine Corps husband, and AI healthcare ventures. She personally is the human mirror of the industrial attributes for which this company is being revalued in the AI era. Choi In-geun should have been the default successor under this old script, but his silence indicates that merely being the eldest son and having family academic continuity is no longer sufficient to automatically generate succession legitimacy.

Korean chaebol marriage networks haven't disappeared; they've just shifted from presidential mansions and domestic chaebol circles to Silicon Valley AI infrastructure startups and U.S. Marine Corps Reserve officers in Washington. Choi Yun-jung married More's co-CEO Yoon Do-yeon; Choi Min-jung married Kevin Hwang, who was stationed at the Pentagon. These are still elite alliances, but the elites are no longer on the same map.

Choi Tae-won told his children at that 50th-anniversary event to 'remember the source when drinking water.' For the SK family's successors, inheritance is not a key, not a list of shares. It is being brought before the 'water source,' to see how the previous generation dug the well, and then being asked to dig their own well in their own era.

Except their era is no longer their grandfather's era of industrial patriotism, nor their father's era of political-business marriages and group expansion. At the very moment SK Hynix is pushed to the center of the global supply chain by the AI cycle, the three Choi children are also being sent to cutting-edge AI labs, Washington diplomatic circles, and Wall Street meeting rooms. What they inherit is a whole set of problems from the global AI industry's game, not any simple answer.