The question hanging over the spontaneous Gangnam gathering was straightforward: why was SK Hynix, Nvidia’s largest supplier of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for AI chips, conspicuously absent?

The absence of SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won from the headline-grabbing “chimaek summit” was less a diplomatic slight than a matter of logistics and timing.

Sources familiar with the matter said the dinner was never meant to be a formal “Korea Inc.” meeting. Huang himself described it as simply wanting to “eat chimaek with friends”, not hold a press conference, and the informal venue could accommodate only a small circle.