SK Group
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SK Group
SK그룹
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| Formerly | Sunkyong Group (1953–1997)[note 1] [1] | ||||||||||||
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| Type | Chaebol (family-controlled business group)[2] | ||||||||||||
| Founded | 1953, as Sunkyong Textile[3] | ||||||||||||
| Founder | Chey Jong-gun[3] | ||||||||||||
| Headquarters | Seoul, South Korea[2] | ||||||||||||
| Holding company | SK Inc.[2] | ||||||||||||
| Industries | Semiconductors Energy and chemicals Telecommunications Life sciences[2] | ||||||||||||
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| Homepage | Newsroom | Companies[2] |
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SK Group | ||||||||||||||||
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SK Group (SK그룹) is a South Korean chaebol — a large, family-controlled group of companies. It is the second-largest such group in South Korea by assets, behind Samsung, and it is built around four main businesses: semiconductors, energy and chemicals, telecommunications, and medicines.[2][8]
The group began in 1953 as a textile mill and spent its first thirty years making cloth. It became an energy company in 1980, a telecoms company in the 1990s, and a semiconductor company in 2012. Today the chip maker it bought last, SK hynix, is by far its biggest earner.[3][1][6]
Its companies are held together by SK Inc., the group holding company, and coordinated by a body called the SUPEX Council. The chairman is Chey Tae-won, a nephew of the founder, who has led the group since 1998.[2][4]
1 History✎
1.1 Sunkyong Textile (1953–1980)✎
Chey Jong-gun bought a war-damaged textile mill in Suwon from the Korean government in 1953 and rebuilt it, reassembling the weaving machines himself. The company he founded there was called Sunkyong Textile. It added acetate thread in 1966 and grew through the 1960s and 1970s as a maker of fabric and synthetic fibre.[3]
After Chey Jong-gun's death his younger brother, Chey Jong-hyon, took over as chairman and led the company through its period of fastest growth.[9]
1.2 Oil, telecoms and the SK name (1980–1998)✎
In December 1980 Sunkyong bought Yukong, formally the Korea Oil Corporation, and turned itself from a textile firm into one of South Korea's largest energy companies. Yukong is the company known today as SK innovation.[9]
Telecommunications followed. The group gave up an earlier telecoms licence in 1992, but by the mid-1990s it controlled Korea Mobile Telecommunications, the mobile operator that became SK Telecom.[9][1]
In 1997 the group brought its three best-known names — Sunkyong, Yukong and Korea Mobile Telecom — under a single brand, SK.[1] Chey Jong-hyon died in 1998 at the age of 69, and his son Chey Tae-won took over as chairman.[9]
1.3 Scandal, a takeover fight, and a new structure (2003–2007)✎
In 2003 an accounting fraud of roughly US$1.2 billion was uncovered at SK Global, a group trading company. Chey Tae-won was convicted over it and given a three-year sentence, of which he served about three months before being released on bail.[10][11]
The scandal pushed SK's share price below ₩9,000 and drew in an outside investor. Sovereign Asset Management, based in Dubai, built a stake of just under 15% in SK Corporation. It campaigned to remove Chey as chairman, arguing that the company was badly governed. Chey himself directly owned only 0.83% of the shares. He survived the 2005 shareholder vote with about 35% support from Korean institutions and small investors. Sovereign eventually sold out.[10] Inside SK the episode is still referred to as the "Sovereign trauma", and it is cited as the reason the chairman has since been reluctant to part with shares.[12]
Partly in response, SK reorganised itself. On 2 July 2007 SK Corporation split into SK Holdings, which owned the shares, and SK Energy, which ran the refining business. Both were listed separately on the Korea Exchange later that month. SK was the second Korean conglomerate to adopt a holding-company structure, after LG in 2004. SK Holdings is now called SK Inc.[13]
Chey was convicted again in 2013, this time of embezzling about US$45 million from group companies to trade futures and options, and was sentenced to four years. He was pardoned by President Park Geun-hye on 13 August 2015, before completing the sentence.[11]
1.4 Semiconductors and AI (2012–present)✎
SK Telecom completed the purchase of the loss-making chip maker Hynix Semiconductor on 14 February 2012, paying ₩3.37 trillion for 21.05% of the shares. It was the largest acquisition SK Telecom had ever made, and creditors had spent years looking for a buyer. The company was renamed SK hynix a month later.[14]
That purchase looked expensive for a decade and then became the most valuable decision in the group's history. When demand for artificial-intelligence hardware took off after 2023, SK hynix's stacked High Bandwidth Memory chips turned out to be the part of an AI computer that was hardest to replace.[15]
In 2021 SK Telecom split off its non-telecom investments into a new listed company, SK Square, which took the SK hynix shareholding with it. The split was announced in August and took effect on 1 November 2021.[16]
2 Structure✎
SK Inc. sits at the top as the group holding company and describes itself as a strategic investment firm. A separate listed holding company, SK Discovery, holds SK chemicals and SK gas and is run by Chey Chang-won.[2][17]
SK Square is the listed investment company that holds the group's stake in SK hynix along with a portfolio of smaller technology businesses. At the end of March 2026 it reported a net asset value of ₩262.1 trillion, of which the SK hynix holding alone accounted for ₩257.0 trillion.[18]
The SUPEX Council is what holds the group together in practice. Set up in 2013, it is described by SK as the highest consultative body in the group, made up of representatives from twenty SK companies and working to the motto "Independent, Yet United". It is not a legal entity and owns nothing. Its job is to coordinate strategy across companies that are separately owned and separately listed. It runs standing committees covering strategy, ICT, communication, human resources, social value, governance, environmental business and semiconductors. Chey Chang-won, a cousin of the chairman and the youngest son of the founder, has chaired it since 2024.[19][17]
3 Businesses✎
3.1 Semiconductors✎
SK hynix is the world's second-largest memory chip maker and the group's dominant business. Around it sit four smaller chip companies. SKC makes advanced materials, including semiconductor polishing pads and copper foil. SK siltron is the world's third-largest maker of the silicon wafers that chips are printed on. SK keyfoundry makes analog chips to other companies' designs, and Solidigm is the American storage-drive business SK hynix built from Intel's old NAND division.[2][20]
3.2 Energy and chemicals✎
SK innovation is the descendant of the Yukong refinery bought in 1980 and now the largest privately owned energy company in the Asia-Pacific region, with combined assets of about ₩105 trillion. Its subsidiaries include SK energy for refining, SK on for electric-vehicle batteries, and SK geo centric for petrochemicals and plastics recycling. SK gas, under SK Discovery, sells liquefied petroleum gas, and SK ecoplant builds industrial and environmental facilities.[21][2]
3.3 Telecommunications and ICT✎
SK Telecom is South Korea's largest mobile operator and now presents itself as an AI infrastructure company. SK Broadband provides internet and television. SK networks runs trading, home appliances, car services and the Walkerhill hotels.[2][22]
3.4 Life sciences✎
The group has been developing medicines since 1993, and in 1996 became the first Korean company to win approval on its own from the United States Food and Drug Administration to begin trials of a new drug. SK biopharmaceuticals works on treatments for the brain and nervous system; its epilepsy drug cenobamate was approved in the United States in 2019. SK bioscience, spun out of SK chemicals in 2018, makes vaccines. SK pharmteco manufactures drug ingredients for other companies.[23][2]
4 Size and finances✎
The Korea Fair Trade Commission publishes an annual ranking of the country's business groups. SK has been second by assets for years, behind Samsung. Its 2025 designation covered 198 companies with ₩362.96 trillion in assets.[8]
In 2025 the group reported revenue of ₩240.25 trillion and an operating profit of ₩50.19 trillion, which put it ahead of the Samsung group's ₩36.62 trillion for the second year running. Net income was ₩44.91 trillion and the group employed about 104,600 people.[5][6]
Those numbers are dominated by one company. SK hynix on its own reported revenue of ₩97.15 trillion and an operating profit of ₩47.21 trillion for 2025. Set against the group totals, that is roughly two-fifths of all SK revenue and very nearly all of its operating profit.[15][5][6]
5 Restructuring since 2024✎
From 2024 the group ran a programme it calls rebalancing, merging or selling businesses that were losing money or sitting outside its priorities.
SK E&S was merged into SK innovation on 1 November 2024, creating a company with about ₩105 trillion in assets.[21] SK Enmove, a profitable lubricants maker, was merged into the loss-making battery company SK on on 1 November 2025.[24] SK ecoplant sold its water and waste businesses to the American investment firm KKR for ₩1.7 trillion in 2025.[25]
The effect has been to shrink the group's company count from 219 to 151 between 2023 and May 2026, and to cut its borrowings from ₩63.02 trillion to ₩49.55 trillion.[7]
Not everything has gone to plan. A sale of SK siltron to Doosan, which was expected to raise around ₩5 trillion, has been under negotiation since late 2025 and remains unfinished, partly because wafer prices rose while the talks ran.[20][26]
6 The AI investment plan✎
On 29 June 2026 Chey Tae-won announced a domestic investment programme of ₩1,100 trillion for what SK calls an AI memory production belt. It is split three ways: ₩600 trillion at the Yongin semiconductor cluster, ₩100 trillion at Cheongju, and ₩400 trillion for two new fabs in the south-west of the country. Completion at Yongin was brought forward from 2045 to 2033.[27] Days later the group put the full figure at ₩2,100 trillion, adding a further ₩1,000 trillion of AI data centres led by SK Telecom.[28] Chey's stated aim is to move South Korea from being a consumer of AI to an exporter of it.[27]
In late July 2026 SK and NVIDIA announced an expanded partnership worth more than US$500 billion. SK Telecom is to build a two-gigawatt AI facility in Korea using NVIDIA's Vera Rubin systems and SK hynix memory, with the first phase due in 2027. SK hynix separately entered a long-term agreement to supply and jointly develop next-generation AI memory.[29]
7 Name and logo✎
The group was called Sunkyong until 1997, when it put Sunkyong, Yukong and Korea Mobile Telecom under the single name SK. A formal brand system followed in 2005, built around the idea of customer happiness.[1]
The symbol is called the Wings of Happiness (행복날개). It is drawn from kites and from the idea of communication, and stands for the group's businesses rising. It is tilted at 29.4 degrees to suggest adventure, and the white lines inside the two wings form the letters S and K. The group's colours are red and orange.[1]
8 See also✎
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- "Inside SK: History of the SK Brand and the Wings of Happiness." SK Group (official). eng.sk.com. Retrieved July 2026.
- "Companies." SK Group (official). eng.sk.com/companies. Retrieved July 2026.
- "The Beginning of Sunkyong Textile." SK Group (official). eng.sk.com/history. Retrieved July 2026.
- "Leadership." SK Group (official). eng.sk.com/leadership. Retrieved July 2026.
- "2026 재계순위: SK." FETV, 2026. fetv.co.kr. Retrieved July 2026.
- "SK Group retains top spot in operating profit over Samsung Group in 2025 data." The Korea Times, July 1, 2026. koreatimes.co.kr. Retrieved July 2026.
- "SK, 계열사 68곳 줄여." Betanews, June 5, 2026. betanews.net. Retrieved July 2026.
- "SK, 계열사 줄여 쇄신." Bloter. bloter.net. Retrieved July 2026.
- "SK Group digitizes former chairman's archive." The Korea Times, April 2, 2025. koreatimes.co.kr. Retrieved July 2026.
- "Seoul's SK in ownership battle." UPI, March 9, 2005. upi.com. Retrieved July 2026.
- "Pardon me: what signal does Seoul think freeing Chey Tae-won sends to the wider world?" Asia Times, August 2015. asiatimes.com. Retrieved July 2026.
- "Chey Tae-won weighs how to fund the divorce settlement." Kyunghyang Shinmun, July 26, 2026. khan.co.kr. Retrieved July 2026.
- "SK launches holding company system." The Korea Times, July 2, 2007. koreatimes.co.kr. Retrieved July 2026.
- "SK Telecom completes Hynix takeover." The Korea Times, February 14, 2012. koreatimes.co.kr. Retrieved July 2026.
- "SK hynix Announces FY25 Financial Results." SK hynix Newsroom (official), January 28, 2026. news.skhynix.com. Retrieved July 2026.
- "SK Telecom Completes Company Split." SK Telecom (official press release), 2021. sktelecom.com. Retrieved July 2026.
- "SK Group executive reshuffle." KED Global, December 5, 2024. kedglobal.com. Retrieved July 2026.
- "Net Asset Value." SK Square Investor Relations (official). sksquare.com. Retrieved July 2026.
- "SUPEX Council." SK Group (official). eng.sk.com. Retrieved July 2026.
- "Doosan to acquire 100% of SK Siltron." KED Global, May 17, 2026. kedglobal.com. Retrieved July 2026.
- "SK innovation's merged entity officially launches." SK Group (official), November 2024. eng.sk.com. Retrieved July 2026.
- "SK networks." SK Group (official). eng.sk.com. Retrieved July 2026.
- "SK biopharmaceuticals." SK Group (official). eng.sk.com. Retrieved July 2026.
- "SK On to merge with SK Enmove." KED Global, July 30, 2025. kedglobal.com. Retrieved July 2026.
- "SK ecoplant to sell water, waste units to KKR." KED Global, August 18, 2025. kedglobal.com. Retrieved July 2026.
- "Doosan continues SK Siltron talks." The Elec, July 27, 2026. thelec.net. Retrieved July 2026.
- "SK hynix announces ₩1,100 trillion investment plan." The Elec, June 2026. thelec.net. Retrieved July 2026.
- "SK Group plans $1.36 trillion investment across AI chips and data centres." The Tech Capital, July 2026. thetechcapital.com. Retrieved July 2026.
- "SK Group and NVIDIA Expand Strategic Partnership Across AI Factories and Next-Generation Memory." NVIDIA Newsroom (official), July 2026. nvidianews.nvidia.com. Retrieved July 2026.