Anna Jiwon Park has been covering the politics at The Korea Times since the summer of 2024, when she joined the press pool for the Office of the President in Korea. Prior to that, she spent about five years reporting extensively on financial markets, regulatory authorities and the financial industry. She joined The Korea Times in 2019 after spending eight years as a broadcast journalist at Arirang TV, Korea’s leading global broadcaster, covering politics, defense and culture.
SK Group chairman's son-in-law part of US Special Forces airstrike in Iran
Kevin Liu Huang / Screenshot from Kevin Liu Huang's social media
By Anna J. Park
Kevin Liu Huang, the husband of SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won’s second daughter, Choi Min-jung, is serving with the U.S. Combined Special Operations Joint Task Force — Central (CSOJTF-C) in the Middle East, and is reported to have taken part in a recent Israeli airstrike operation against Iran.
In a LinkedIn post shared earlier this week, Huang wrote, “I thought deploying to the Middle East with a joint task force headquarters would be 'sleepy' vs. working in Ukraine or INDOPACOM.”
He added that he never imagined witnessing during his deployment “the fall of the Assad regime, the Houthis’ capitulation to our bombing campaigns, or joining the Israelis in directly bombing Iran.”
Based on his post, Huang is believed to have participated in multiple key military operations, including the collapse of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria last December and a bombing campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen that recently ended in a ceasefire deal. Most notably, he reportedly took part in the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities Sunday (local time), which involved B-2 stealth bombers and Tomahawk missiles.
According to his LinkedIn page, he assumed his role as Operations Officer for the Special Operations Joint Task Force — Central, Special Operations Command CENTCOM in November 2024. Considering that he married Choi in October last year at the Grand Walkerhill Hotel in Seoul, it appears he was deployed to the Middle East shortly after the wedding.
The CSOJTF-C oversees integrated special operations across the Middle East and conducts counterterrorism and joint missions with allied forces, including Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Huang also noted that he received his first Meritorious Service Medal and, despite promotion odds of less than 2 percent, was selected for the rank of major. He added that even amid Iranian missile attacks, he secured $550,000 in investments for a new startup venture.
A Chinese American, Huang holds bachelor’s degrees in government and statistics from Harvard, as well as an MBA from Stanford. While serving as a U.S. Marine Corps officer, he also founded and managed a software startup based in California.
In another post uploaded a day earlier, Huang also shared his reflections on the risks and implications of striking Iran’s nuclear facilities.
“There is a cost to showing off our technology to enemies. We've revealed a key capability on a global stage as well as its limitations. Our adversaries now have an opportunity to evolve, and they will undoubtedly take it,” he wrote.