Category: Litigation

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On December 13, 2012, South Korea acceded to the Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (“Hague Child Abduction Convention”), whereby South Korea became the 89th contracting nation to the convention.

Concluded in October 1980, the Hague Child Abduction Convention is a multilateral treaty aiming at the prompt return of wrongfully removed or retained child from one contracting nation to another.  Under the Convention, any person or institution claiming that a child has been removed or retained in breach of custody rights may apply to any other contracting nation for assistance in securing the return of the child.

As with the Convention entering into force on March 1, 2013, South Korea enacted subsequent domestic legislation concerning the implementation of the Convention.  Under the new legislation, the foreign spouse who is the citizen of the contracting nation of the Convention can make an application to the Minister of Justice of South Korea for the assistance of the return of a child wrongfully abducted to South Korea.  The case asserting the return of the child pursuant to the Convention is under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Seoul Family Court.  The court may issue a preliminary injunction to maintain the status quo.  Also, the court may dismiss the application for the return of the child when, among others, it has passed 1 or more years since the abduction and the child has already adjusted herself into the current environment.  The person who (more…)

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그림 2A distributor from the U.S. entered into a distributorship contract with Korean supplier (exporter) for certain goods.  Of course, the U.S. distributor was thinking to resell the goods in U.S. market for a markup. But the problem broke up after the contract was duly singed and executed.  With no reason, Korean supplier suddenly refused to sell the goods and rescinded the contract.  Due to this unexpected turmoil by the foreign supplier, the U.S. distributor could not properly perform the reselling deals with the local warehouse stores, which the distributor had thought very lucrative. There would be no doubt that the act of Korean distributor constitutes a breach of distributorship agreement. But, the U.S. distributor did not pay anything, yet.  The only loss they encountered was they lost a good deal with 3rd party by reason of the Korean supplier’s breach of contract.  Now, the U.S. distributor tries to recover damages and loss of profits from the supplier in Korea which they suffered from the failure of the reselling deal with the local warehouse stores.  In this case, can the U.S. distributor prevail in Korean court and under Korean law?

The key legal issue would be whether the Korean supplier knew of the fact that the distributor had completed their negotiation with 3rd party for the resale agreement.  According to the ruling from the Supreme Court of South Korea, if the supplier knew of the fact, the supplier is liable for the distributor’s loss relating to failure or non-performance of the resale agreement with 3rd party.  By contrast, (more…)

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We have received questions regarding this issue quite often.  Actually our office had taken a civil case arising out of termination of marital engagement between Korean and non-Korean, and successfully defended our client from civil liability.  So we think it is a good time to look into what happens in this kind of legal dispute and its legal implication.

Firstly, it must be mentioned that, under Korean law, if a matrimonial engagement is duly made, no party can legally terminate or rescind the engagement without justifiable causes.  This, however, does not mean the engagement shall be enforced regardless of the objection from the other party once the engagement agreement was made.  Rather, it just means if one party terminates the engagement without cause, he or she is obliged to pay monetary compensation to the other.

Then what are  the “justifiable causes” to terminate the engagement?  The law sets forth justifiable causes as follows:

  1. If one of the parties has been sentenced to punishment of not less than suspension of qualification;
  2. If one of the parties has been adjudicated as incompetent or quasi-incompetent after (more…)

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Let’s assume a creditor has a monetary claim against a debtor in Korea but the debtor refuses to pay it.  The creditor would proceed to file a lawsuit to get a judgment to collect his claim.  Unfortunately, however, the chances are that knowing the complaint was filed, the debtor would try to conceal or transfer his assets to evade from the liability under judgment.  This shows why provisional attachment is highly required to secure the judgment effectively.

Read More: Korean Lawyer Explains Debt Collections In South Korea – Overview

Provisional attachment is a judicial measure available to anyone who has a monetary claim to lock down certain assets.  It, depending on the type of court order, prevents the debtor from selling assets or enables the creditor to secure his interest in the debtor’s asset regardless of the sale by the debtor, until the court issues a judgment on the merit.

The creditor can, and usually does, seek a provisional remedy before she files a complaint on the merit.  So, this is a very powerful weapon for the creditor.  For example, as many Korean creditors do, if the creditor succeeds in putting a provisional attachment on the debtor’s bank account, the debtor would not be able to use the money and could face several penalties regarding its banking/financing transactions with the bank.  This could heavily deteriorate the ability for a small com­pany to con­duct business, which makes the debtor (more…)

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There have been disputes as to whether Digital Rights Management(DRM) does violate competition law.  By using a DRM, the company can tie the playback of certain digital files to its own IT device.  The problem arises when the company has a dominant market position, because it entails an argument from competitors that the company has abused its dominant market position to distort a free competition at the market.

In November last year, the Supreme Court of Korea firstly issued a ruling addressing this issue.  The case dates back to 2006, when Fair Trade Commission(FTC) of South Korea ordered SK Telecom, the largest mobile carrier company and music download service provider, to lift up a DRM which had prevented the purchasers of MP3 mobile phone of SK Telecom from playing MP3 files downloaded from other online music store that SK Telecom does not operate.  SK Telecom had appealed the FTC’s decision to the court.

At the heart of this lawsuit lies the issue of whether SK Telecom’s use of DRM does constitute an abuse of its dominant market position under Korean Competition law.  In this regard, the Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act(MRFTA) of Korea provides that any market dominant enterpriser shall not commit an act of either (i) unreasonably interfering with the business activities of other enterprisers or (ii) unreasonably doing considerable harm to the interests of consumers.  The FTC found SK Telecom’s using a DRM (more…)

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Q) I filed for divorce in Ontario, Canada.  My husband lived in Canada and he was duly served with the court’s documents.  I will have a final divorce ruling from the Canadian court including child support and alimony order soon.  But the issue is he will probably leave Canada and head to South Korea after the ruling is issued.  Will the Korean Courts recognize the Canadian court order in order to enforce his performance of child support and alimony payment?

A) There is a case where the Korean Supreme Court recognized and approved the Canadian court’s divorce/asset distribution/child support/alimony order.  That order was issued from the Superior Court of Justice in Ontario.

As a matter of law, the Korean court recognizes a foreign ruling pursuant to the rules of foreign judgment recognition: (i) the foreign court has jurisdiction over the case in perspective of Korean law, (ii) the defendant was duly served, (iii) the ruling of the foreign court does not violate the social order of South Korea and (iv) there exists a mutual guaranty for recognition of rulings between the two jurisdictions.

For the last element, the Korean Supreme Court clearly declared that South Korea and Ontario have a mutual guaranty.

What is more important in this ruling is that the Supreme Court recognized the foreign court’s alimony order.  Under Korean divorce law, there is no legal concept of alimony in a divorce.  Therefore, some may argue that as the alimony is not the legal right established in Korea, recognizing the foreign court’s alimony ruling in Korea would violate the social order of  South Korea.  But, (more…)

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It was reported that last month Apple’s South Korean office paid $945 of compensation to one of South Korean iPhone users for the breaching of privacy by the controversial iPhone user location tracking.  Here is the detail from Reuters.

By the way, some news media reported that this was a ruling from a Korean district court.  I, as a Korean lawyer, think that statement is half right and half wrong.  Basically it is true that the court issued a ruling which ordered the Apple Korea to pay $945 to the user.  But this was not a formal trial case, but a Request for a Payment Order case.  Payment order is a more convenient & simplified legal procedure for claimant to get a judgment from the court compared to a formal lawsuit.  Once a request filed, the Korean court does not question the debtor (in this case, the Apple Korea) and issue a Payment Order within 2 or 4 weeks (in certain courts, within a few days). This payment order, a sort of ruling, asks the opposing party to choose whether to admit the claim as written on the request or to make an objection.  If no objection has been raised from the opposing party within 2 weeks, then (more…)

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There have been an increasing conflict between the free expression and the copyright protection in relation to the matter of a UCC, a user-created content, posted on the internet site.  For example, in the United States, there was a legal dispute concerning a 29-second YouTube video clip of a toddler dancing to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy”. In that case, the copyright holder to the Prince’s song alleged the YouTube video clip explicitly infringed the song’s copyright.

Almost the identical lawsuit had been filed in South Korea. In Korea, a father uploaded to his blog operated by Naver, the largest Internet portal site, a video capturing his 5 year-old daughter singing and dancing to a famous Korean female singer(Dambi Sohn)’s song, titled “Crazy” – what a coincident that two cases even had very similar song titles, “Let’s Go Crazw” and “Crazy”.  Just soon after the video clip was uploaded, it was taken down by the portal site operator upon a request from the copyright holder to the song alleging the video is a copyright infringement as it was used without permission. Then the father filed both a declaratory lawsuit claiming that uploading the video did not constitute a copyright infringement and a monetary compensation lawsuit for mental distress which he suffered from the unjust take down of the video he’d made.

On February 18, 2010, the Seoul Southern District Court sided with the father. The court ruled that uploading a video at issue did not constitute a copyright infringement because it fell within the scope of “the quotation from works made public” under Article 28 of the Copyright Act, which (more…)

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This is an issue arising from an international IP dispute between Konami, a well-known Japanese game production company, and Neople, a Korean game production company.  Back in 2007, Konami alleged that game characters in Neople’s game titled “Shin-Ya-Gu”(New baseball) infringed Konami’s copyright in its famous baseball game “Jikkyou Yaku”(see the picture.  the left image is Konami’s character and the right one is Neople’s) and filed a copyright infringement lawsuit to a Korean court.

The lower courts had overruled Konami’s claim stating a game character itself could not be protected as a copyrighted work under Korean copyright law unless such character had been commercialized independently.

This year, however, the Supreme Court of Korea dissented from the lower courts’ opinion.  The Supreme Court ruled a game character can be copyrighted separated from its original work, a game.  The court held that “In order to be protected under the copyright law, a work must be a creative work expressing human thoughts or emotions. Thus, in case of a character implying shape and name of person, animal and so on appearing in cartoon, television, movie, newspaper, magazine and so on, if the creative personality was shown in the visual expression as to the appearance, action of such person, animal, then such character can be a work as protected under the copyright law, apart from its original work”.  Then the Supreme Court continued to held that  (more…)

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eab7b8eba6bc-111South Korean popstar RAIN (Chung, Ji-hoon) and his ex-agency JYP Entertainment had lost their lawsuit in Hawaiian District Court brought by a local promoter, Click Entertainment, alleging Rain’s last-minute cancellation of Honolulu concert in 2007 cost them $1.5 million and caused damage to the company’s reputation.

A couple of days ago, the court found in Click’s favour, ruling that Rain and JYP were guilty of both breach of contract and fraud.  Nearly $5 million of the damages payment are punitive, with Rain himself and JYP ordered to pay half each.

It is reported that Rain has testified he didn’t know why the concert had been cancelled and the cancellation was out of his control.

I think many people, especially outside of Korea, wonder how the singer, the performer himself, couldn’t know the reason of the cancellation and how he could say it was “out of his control”.  In this regard, I think people should know more about Korean music business to understand Rain’s comment.

In Korea, almost every singers and bands are under exclusive contracts with certain entertainment entrepreneurs, called “Ghi-Hoek-Sa”, which is the mixture of agencies and management companies, yes, they’re doing both of jobs in Korea.  The problem is the contract between the singers and the entrepreneur is being criticized as very unfavorable to the singers.  For example, the term of the contract is very long, (more…)