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$2.5 Billion Divorce… The Gaming Billionaire Who Surpassed SK’s Chey Tae-won
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Chairman Chey appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court, but because the judgment came from a remand trial following an earlier Supreme Court ruling, it appears unlikely to change substantially.
The divorce case between Chey Tae-won and Roh Soh-yeong had been called Korea’s “divorce of the century” because of the enormous amount involved in the property division. Before that, reported divorce settlements involving chaebol families included several tens of billions of won in the case of Samsung’s Lee Jae-yong and Lim Se-ryung, 1.5 billion won in the case of Shinsegae’s Chung Yong-jin and Ko Hyun-jung, and 14.1 billion won in the case of Hotel Shilla’s Lee Boo-jin and Lim Woo-jae.
But another divorce property-division case, largely overshadowed by the Chey-Roh case, has now become hot news — and it involves an individual not widely known to the public: Smilegate founder Kwon Hyuk-bin.
On the 9th, the Seoul Family Court ruled that Smilegate founder Kwon Hyuk-bin must transfer 35% of Smilegate shares and pay 65 billion won in cash to his former wife, surnamed Lee. When the shares are converted into monetary value, the total is estimated at about 2.5 trillion won. That is roughly 2.5 times Chey Tae-won’s property-division amount of 944 billion won. The owner of what might appear to be merely a gaming company has surpassed the owner of SK, currently Korea’s second-largest business group.
Kwon was once ranked ninth on Forbes’ list of the “50 Richest People in South Korea” in 2024. Kwon and his former wife are known to have been partners in founding the company.
Looking at major divorce settlements overseas, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos made what is regarded as the largest settlement, transferring to his former wife MacKenzie shares worth $48.7 billion, including a 4% stake in Amazon, equivalent to 25% of Bezos’ own holdings.
Bill Gates, who divorced earlier, reportedly transferred $5.6 billion to Melinda Gates, the second-largest amount. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, meanwhile, was married only briefly to his first and second wives before divorcing, reportedly paying settlements of 5.8 billion won and 22 billion won, respectively.
*Below is a post by Chosun Ilbo reporter Roh Suk-jo, originally published on his personal Facebook account under the title, “What Surprised Me More Than the 2.5 Trillion Won Divorce: Why Had I Never Heard of a 7 Trillion Won Gaming Billionaire?” In the post, he traces the fascinating story of how Kwon Hyuk-bin became a “7 trillion won gaming billionaire.”
A few days ago, stories about a “divorce of the century” appeared in numerous media outlets.
The man at the center of the story was Smilegate founder Kwon Hyuk-bin.
In the first trial of the divorce case, the Seoul Family Court ruled that Kwon should transfer 35% of Smilegate shares and 65 billion won in cash to his spouse as part of the division of marital property. Combined, the amount comes to approximately 2.55 trillion won.
That is far more than the amount awarded in the divorce case between SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won and Roh Soh-yeong.
But something other than the 2.5 trillion won caught my attention.
“Who is Kwon Hyuk-bin?”
It is a little embarrassing to admit, but this was the first time I had heard his name. I had barely heard of a company called Smilegate either.
Yet the court valued Kwon Hyuk-bin’s net assets at more than 7.3 trillion won. Most of that wealth consisted of shares in the unlisted Smilegate, which he wholly owned.
What on earth had he done to build such enormous wealth?
Curious, I began searching through various articles. I also looked through stories written by reporters covering industry.
Smilegate was a gaming company.
Kwon Hyuk-bin is a developer by background who graduated from Sogang University with a degree in electronic engineering. His first startup did not work out well, and in 2002 he founded Smilegate.
The game that changed the company’s destiny was “CrossFire,” released in 2007.
It is a first-person shooter, or FPS, in which players fight opponents with firearms.
The game became a far bigger hit in China than in Korea.
Smilegate partnered with China’s Tencent, and CrossFire, which launched in China in 2008, became a phenomenal success there.
The numbers seem almost unreal.
At one point, the game had 8 million concurrent users.
It has since been offered in 80 countries around the world, and its cumulative number of users across PC and mobile platforms is said to have reached 1.2 billion.
By the end of 2025, its cumulative revenue had reached $16.8 billion.
Converted into Korean won, that is well over 20 trillion won.
All of that money was generated by a single game.
There was another reason Kwon Hyuk-bin’s fortune became so enormous.
Normally, venture-company founders receive outside investment as their businesses grow and gradually give up portions of their ownership.
Kwon also received outside investment in the early days, but later bought those shares back.
He did not take the company public either.
As a result, he ultimately came to own 100% of Smilegate Holdings.
As the company grew, virtually all of that increase in value flowed directly into the value of the founder’s personal holdings.
And the story did not end with CrossFire.
“Lost Ark” later became another major success. When it was released in North America and Europe, it surpassed 1.3 million concurrent users on Steam, the world’s largest PC gaming platform.
As I continued looking into the story, I began to understand why I had never heard of this company.
I hardly ever play video games.
Even when I try to remember the period when I played games most enthusiastically, I can only go back to my high school and college years, when I played StarCraft with friends.
Since then, games have hardly been a part of my life.
So perhaps it is not all that strange that I had never even heard the name “CrossFire.”
Still, it was astonishing to discover that, without my knowing it, a game created in Korea had become a national phenomenon in China, spread to 80 countries, attracted 1.2 billion users and generated more than 20 trillion won in revenue.
That success alone pushed the estimated value of the founder’s company shares above 7 trillion won.
He did not build an automobile factory.
He did not construct a semiconductor plant.
He did not own a mine or an oil field.
He created a world that people enjoy on their computer screens.
I had never once entered that world.
And yet that world carried a price tag of 7 trillion won.
Had I not read the “divorce of the century” story this time, I probably would have continued living without ever knowing about him.
Thanks to the divorce story, I found myself researching Smilegate and CrossFire at length for the first time in my life.
It was probably the longest I had spent looking at gaming-related material since my StarCraft days.
I went in following a divorce story and came out having read a story about the gaming industry.
Original Facebook post by Chosun Ilbo reporter Roh Suk-jo: Roh Suk-jo’s original Facebook post
#KwonHyukbin #Smilegate #CrossFire
* This article has been translated by ChatGPT.