By Brendon Carr
Marmot’s Hole Guest Blogger
In the comments to Election Commission Wants Everyone’s Mind to be a Blank Slate Before August 21 here on the Marmot’s Hole, a tangent emerged which could hijack the thread, something which happens from time to time. The topic is, I think, of general interest, and so for purposes of classification and indexing (so that others might find it later), it seemed appropriate to put in its own thread.
Gerry Bevers asked:
What is so hard about the Korean bar exam? Is it just the language or are there other things about it that make it harder than bar exams in the US? Do you think it does a good job of determining who is qualified to be a Korean lawyer? Do you think it may be unnecessarily difficult or may be focusing on the wrong things?
Brendon, you previously suggested that Korean lawyers do not seem to have much respect for foreign lawyers. Why do you think they feel that way?
What are your general feelings about Korean lawyers? President Roh Mu-hyun is a Korean lawyer, and my impression of him is that there is something wrong with him in the logic department, or at least different. What is the biggest difference you have noticed between Korean lawyers and American lawyers?
Would you really like to see your daughters practicing law in Korea?
From what I have seen you write, Brendon, you seem to be quite knowledgable and talented. Do you ever think that you might be wasting that knowledge and talent working in Korea, where there are restricted placed on what foreign lawyers can do? Though the money seems to be pretty good for foreign lawyers in Korea, are there any other advantages to working here?
These are questions which get asked from time to time, so I guess it’s of general interest. The Korean bar exam is very hard. Only 1000 new lawyers are permitted to pass it each year, against about 50,000 who sit for the exam — a 2% pass rate. In years past, the quota was less than 300. The exam (and the law) is written in language designed to separate the wheat from the chaff: To obscure rather than to illuminate, to control rather than to empower — thereby eliminating those candidates who have not been soaked in Korean obscurantism. Anyone who passes it is a very smart individual by any definition, more so by this country’s definition of “smart”.
But it’s more of a test of rote memorization of a number of things, including rules of law, but also including history, literature, and political thought. I’ll bet money Dokdo is on the test! In other words, the Korean bar examination measures not just legal knowledge, but also how “Korean” one is, and how successful one has already been in the Korean educational system. Seoul National University students pass this test at rates much higher than others. The foreigner who passes this exam will be quite exceptional — more exceptional than me. However, this test doesn’t have much to do with how good a lawyer one will be. Just like the bar exam in the States!
Recently a handful of would-be lawyers made news because they were disqualified in the face-to-face interview portion — the first ones ever! Much was made of the fact that the interviews required “political correctness” in the responses: One failed applicant was allegedly disqualified for responding that the United States was Korea’s “main enemy” (good!). But Korean-language reports had the majority of the failed applicants getting DQ’ed for simple boneheadedness. My favorite was the guy who was rejected because his answer to an issue-spotting question involving a hypothetical criminal battery on his person was “I’d punch that guy right back!” The examiners were disappointed that there was no philosophy behind the response — no libertarian self-help argument, just hot-headedness — and no recognition of what they were trying to do with that question. This is a sign of good things to come: Foreign lawyers who have worked with young Korean lawyers most frequently complain about issue-spotting skills (as in, “They don’t have any“).
Some Korean lawyers have very little respect for foreign-qualified lawyers. But to be fair, in my opinion they usually have very little respect for anyone, including each other. From their lofty positions at the top of the social pyramid, and having been validated one’s whole life as a super-genius, it’s natural to look down on everyone. One also finds that more-senior Korean lawyers who do speak English, and who do have experience working with foreign lawyers as well as foreign clients, generally do respect their foreign colleagues. The arrogant pisspot Korean lawyer tends to be one of the younger ones (with poor language skills), still convinced that passing the bar makes him a demigod and everyone else owes him something. Except for the language element, I’d guess this is the same everywhere — on Wall Street or in Barcelona, as well as in Seoul. I can say that I’ve worked with some tremendous jerks, and I have worked with some really great people. On balance, more of the latter than the former. But my experiences have generally been better than some other foreign lawyers I know; I don’t know why.
My own opinion is that Korean lawyers are ill-served by the title “lawyer”. They’re not lawyers as we think of the profession: The same word connotes completely different things between our cultures, and in the case where the Korean lawyers come up against foreigners’ expectation of “lawyer”, they are generally judged to be lacking. It’s really not fair to the Korean lawyers, and being criticized in this manner irritates them unnecessarily.
In this respect I refer to capacity for logical argumentation (you’re not the only one who’s noticed Roh’s ill-formed logic skills), lateral thinking, and a willingness to communicate and have dialogue with the client. Those aren’t skills tested on the exam, and not developed through experience on the bench, as a prosecutor, or in private practice for Korean clients either. Once you pass the test, you don’t have to explain yourself to anyone. People have to explain themselves to you.
So they hate to be challenged to explain themselves, and to have their judgment questioned in the Western fashion; it’s shocking how so many Korean lawyers believe “As I am a lawyer…” (shut up and do what I say) is the proper way to structure an argument. Unfortunately, challenging the opinion of the outside counsel is the function of the in-house counsel in multinational corporations. So the supply of Korean lawyers fit to be called “lawyer” for foreign clients is quite limited indeed.
This is particularly true of the former-judge/former-prosecutor attorney in private practice. Especially the prosecutors! Ten or twenty years of bullying people does not equip them with good reasoning skills, and does not give them much of a “bedside manner” either. It does make them good at demanding astonishing fees based on the presumptive power of their connections.
That doesn’t mean the Korean lawyers all suck. That’s an unfair criticism usually levelled against them by disaffected foreign lawyers, tired of the putdowns. It just means they are not altogether great at what we Western lawyers do, and what Western clients want them to do. They’re the very best at what they do (which is cram for tests), and the foreign lawyer generally doesn’t compete with the Korean lawyer in any meaningful way. I like to contrast the heart surgeon with a urologist. Them parts is different. Don’t let either one of those clowns handle the other’s specialty! And a full-service hospital needs both of ‘em — efforts of the heart surgeons to restrict the urologists, or vice versa, are nonsensical.
As for whether I’m wasting my talent here, well — it’s my talent to waste. I’ll do this as long as it’s fun. (The money is not that good either. It beats the hell out of being a Navy Chief, but does not stack up well to Investment Wanking, and many of those guys seem to be doltish.)
From what I have seen you write, Brendon, you seem to be quite knowledgable and talented.
Dammit, why does nobody ever say handsome?
75 Comments
Mr. Carr,
Is it fair to say that most waygook lawyers in Korea provide more consulting support than trial work? The reason why I ask is you mentioned that you have not passed the Korea bar, “for what its worth”. I have worked with local Korean counsel in a non-trial capacity. If I were to seek your services out, would you be able to offer the same perspective of a lawyer who has not passed the local bar? Both of these questions are for my education. Best regards!
Korean lawyers are generally not trained as counsellors and business advisors and there is almost zero demand for such services from domestic clients (see this Asia Society discussion of legal services in Japan but substitute the word “Korea” and you’ll be just fine); a foreign lawyer is the key lever for Korean firms delivering such services to foreign clients. Superior Korean lawyers help, for sure, but without the foreign lawyer’s assistance there is usually a strong disconnect. Our societies are too different for it to be otherwise.
There are, of course, a dozen or more Korean lawyers who are experienced and accomplished enough to handle foreign clients directly. The partner of my current firm is one of these excellent Korean lawyers (he worked at a big Korean firm, and a big American firm, plus he was trained by me when we were both associates at that big Korean firm); he’s better with me, of course — like Moon Pie and RC Cola. However, it would be reckless and stupid of any foreign lawyer to try to advise clients without the backing of a good Korean colleague.
By the way, there is a role for foreign lawyers in trial preparation as well. Increasingly, documents in the domestic marketplace are in the English language. Pawing through these documents and organizing the facts and issues is an important function that foreign lawyers tend to do better — faster, certainly, since it’s our language. Additionally, thanks to the intense focus necessary to ascend the ziggurat, Korean lawyers tend to be ill-informed about the world at large (surprisingly more so than the rest of their frog-in-the-well countrymen); foreign lawyers help a lot in shaping their colleagues’ understanding of the underlying business, and business imperatives, which are the reasons for litigation in the first place.
Great post, Brendon. Thanks.
Mr. Carr,
You bring a great deal of clarity to a complex subject. Thank you
I don’t know how a 2% pass rate compares with the the Bar exams in the US, but feel the US pass rate is too high. Unless recently changed, at least one state did not required a Bar exam if you graduated from the right schools.
Mr. Carr has a pretty accurate grasp of the status of the legal profession in Korea, but as someone who’s passed the Korean bar, I thought I might provide some additional background for those who find this particular segment of Korean society of interest.
As Mr. Carr has pointed out time and again, the foreign lawyer and the Korean lawyer are two almost completely different animals. The legal environment in Korea, the role demanded of its lawyers, and the training they receive are miles apart from what US or European lawyers go through.
It has only been about 5 years or so since the bar exam was expanded to include 1,000 entrants. As recently as the mid-1990s the number was limited to 300; this was expanded to 700 in the late 90s, and then to the current number against plenty of opposition. Think this is tough? In the 60s and 70s there was actually one year when just ONE person passed the exam - and there are plenty more examples of as few as 2 or 3 persons passing in a given year.
Every year, Korea’s Supreme court and Prosecutor’s office each appoint slightly over a hundred new judges and prosecutors. This means that until the mid-to-late 1990s passing the bar exam essentially meant that you were to become a judge or prosecutor. This is a mentality that is still ingrained deep in the Korean psyche. In fact, I believe that until recently (and even now) the term ‘bar exam’ was a spectacular misnomer - the actuality of the exam is closer to that of the mandarin examinations of the Chosun era or the Chinese dynasties. Passing the exam meant that you were essentially guaranteed a lifetime of prestige in governmental service, and should you feel the pinch because you happened not to have chaebol in-laws, you could leave office and expect to reap staggering monopoly profits acting as a mouthpiece between the ‘commoners’ and your recent colleagues. This is why I think simply calling it ‘goshi/gosi’ in the Korean is better - try to explain to a foreigner who’s never been to Korea what a ‘hagwon’ is and compare that with the intuitive understanding most of the posters here must have.
This is changing somewhat with the increase in entrants - notice that now the majority will now enter the market directly as lawyers. And as newly-minted professionals, they cannot hope to compete with older lawyers who have ‘connections’ to the judiciary, and instead are being forced to expand the spectrum of legal services and cater more to the demands of their clientele. This shift is probably still unnoticeable to the layperson and will take a lot more time to play out, but it is happening.
Meanwhile, the state of Korean legal education - from majoring in law as an undergraduate to preparing for the bar exam and including additional training undertaken after actually passing - is in a pretty sorry state. There are several disconnects between all these stages, and certainly also with the reality of practice.
The legal education a law student receives in university from his professors is generally a regimen of highly abstracted legal theory, derived from Germany by way of Japan. A law professor may or may not have any interest in whether his students actually learn anything from him - certainly there is little incentive for him to ensure this. In actually preparing for the exam, the student will turn to gosi-hagwons(how’s that for a Korean retch-inducer?) and the exam-oriented distillations they provide of the mostly useless academic disputes their professors have with each other and the jurisprudence of the Korean courts. They cram ignominiously - and they have reason to do so.
Here are some interesting facts about the written stage(second stage) of the exam. Applicants will take 7 subjects over the course of 4 days. Out of a total of 100 points, the person in first place will generally score an average of about 60~63 points. Scoring in the mid-to-high fifties will ensure a position within the top hundred or so, and an average of 50 will allow you to squeak in. Should you score below 40 ON ANY ONE OF THE SUBJECTS, however, you will be disqualified no matter your average. I have seen many many brilliant people who sweated blood and tears in preparation be disqualified because they scored a 39.5 on a single subject. Given that kind of razor-thin margin, and since each subject will feature about 3 questions, missing just one question on any subject can potentially be the kiss of death. This makes passing the gosi something closer to an act of divine providence than an accurate and objective measure of whether that person ‘deserves’ to be a ‘lawyer’. It hardly needs saying that this is totally irrational, even disgusting.
So let us say the lucky applicant has passed. That person’s first reaction will be to thank God, but will forget soon enough that perhaps God also meant for him/her to be humble upon receiving His blessing. The person’s acquaintances will then congratulate him/her and query whether he/she will be a judge or prosecutor. Should the person reply that he/she would like to become a lawyer, the questioner will be taken aback and query that maybe it might be better to get some experience in government first.
The applicant will then enter a highly singular educational institution called the Judicial Research and Training Institute for an additional two years training to prepare him/her for ‘practice’. The JRTI is actually a Korean high school in disguise run by the Korean Supreme Court that every year gathers together 1,000 of the best crammers in Korea. What the JRTI does, in essence, is to administer exams over three semesters(one semester is occupied by internships in courthouses, prosecutor’s offices, and law firms) and based upon their grades, the trainees will apply to either become a judge or a prosecutor upon graduation. The curriculum, naturally, is weighted towards those professions. About 50% of the curriculum is the training a judge would receive(writing judgements etc.) 30% to that of a prosecutor, and the remaining portion to ‘lawyer’ training. Remember how I said the total number of new judges and prosecutors each year is a little less than 300? Trainees once again must struggle in cut-throat competition to place within that magic number - even those who have no inclination to go into government must get those grades to get into the major law firms, otherwise they are ‘out in the cold’, forced to go it alone with very little guidance received in an increasingly crowded market. Even worse - they will be branded ’second class’ in their own minds and in the minds of their colleagues. The trainee’s aforementioned acquaintances will now ask again what the trainee will be doing, and upon hearing that he/she will be going into private practice as a lawyer, will nod inwards in pity.
There is plenty more to say about Korea’s legal culture(not just the professionals but also the attitudes of the layperson), but I think this will shed some light on what a Korean lawyer goes through until he/she actually starts practice. Any questions are welcome.
PS. While Mr. Carr says he would bet money that Dokdo is on the test, he would lose that bet. I have no recollection of Dokdo ever being included in the test or in preparation materials. Also ‘history, literature, and political thought’ are no-shows on the test.(Korean history ceased being a subject about ten years ago) The gosi is pretty much colorless outside of legal theory and jurisprudence.
PPS. Regarding the recent interview disqualifications, the wonder is not that they DQ’ed so many,(and in any case, 10 out of 1000 is still only a 1% failure rate) but that they DQ’ed so few before this. This was born of a perverse mentality on the part of the administrators who were happy to mercilessly hatchet deserving candidates in the written stage of the exam yet somehow felt that even the most boneheaded psychotic a**hole who emerged from the bloodbath to get to the interview stage was somehow touched by divine providence and interfering with fate on the basis of (gasp) an interview would invoke the wrath of God and man.
I think you’re handsome.
Brendan, just out of curiosity are the Korean lawyers that take up USFK cases considered “second rate lawyers” in the Korean legal circles?
Thanks for the very informative post, leefr.
“Meanwhile, the state of Korean legal education - from majoring in law as an undergraduate to preparing for the bar exam and including additional training undertaken after actually passing - is in a pretty sorry state. There are several disconnects between all these stages, and certainly also with the reality of practice.”
The fact that these students are fresh out of highschool must limit what can be covered during the first two years, hence the extra training after they’ve passed the bar exam.
It may be worth noting as well, that while of course foreign legal consultants may not argue cases before a Korean judge, foreigners may serve as arbitrators and may also represent clients at arbitration during proceedings of the Korean Commercial Arbitration Board.
Nice post, and good summary of the situation.
Something not addressed is how they wittle down 50,000 test takers to get 1,000 lawyers. To compare with Japan has a similar pass rate — 1.58% for the traditional bar exam this year — it’s not just one test, but a series of tests.
First there’s the multiple choice section in May that tests just on the Constitution, the Civil Code, and the Criminal Code. Of this, about 1/7 get a passing score (about 70-80% correct of just 60 questions) and then take the essays in July, which cover the original three subjects plus the Commercial Code, Civil Procedure, and Criminal Procedure. This test has a 1/5 - 1/7 pass rate. Add to that a final oral test in December, and you land up with a 90% pass rate.
15~20% x 15~20% x 90% equals a 1~2% pass rate.
History is no longer on the test? In 1997 I briefly flirted with the idea of preparing for the Korean bar examination (this was before I understood what five years in the gosiwon really means), and found in the prep materials I looked at then several questions which — after getting some help figuring out what the hell they said — struck me as being more in the vein of “how Korean are you” than “how much do you know about law”. That such questions have been removed from the written test (but might still be extant in the interview) speaks to the ongoing process of reform in the selection of new lawyers. But are we sure that Dokdo is not on that test now? It turns up everywhere else — I would have thought Dokdo to be the equivalent of “Seneca Falls, 1848″ as the laughable mandatory social-engineering questions on college examinations.
leefr points out an issue which I thought of once I hit the bed last night: The expansion of the exam-passers quota to 1000, a number greater than the capacity of government employment of judges and prosecutors, is having a profound effect on the shape of the profession. leefr writes:
It’s happening, no doubt, but for now it’s very painful for the new lawyers who are not selected for the judiciary or prosecution after JRTI. Many of them are completely demoralized by the stigma of not being in the top third of that very select group, even if their skill set should objectively make them very competitive. It affects their earning potential quite substantially, and paralyzes their marketing efforts (well, really it strangles their will to try to market themselves). During the marketing cycle, after being favorably evaluated by the headquarters legal department, such lawyers will encounter Korean staff of multinational potential clients who then ask “Were you a judge or prosecutor?” — full stop, it’s over right then.
But someguyinkorea writes:
Someguy, JRTI students probably average above the age of 30. The successful applicant succeeds because he or she has locked him- or herself in a jail cell (the gosiwon) for several years.
Brendon, I was obviously talking about my undergraduate law students, most of which were still in their teens.
Thank you very much, Mr. Lee, for such an honest, detailed, explanation of the process Korean lawyers, prosecutors, and judges must go through to achieve success.
I am astonished by your English skills. It is hard to imagine that you can most probably express yourself just as well or better in Korean as you can in English. Even though Mr. Carr said that a person who passes the Korean bar exam is “a very smart individual by any definition,” I get the feeling that even among Korean lawyers you are exceptional.
Your post deserves a bigger audience than you have here at The Marmot’s Hole. It is a great post.
The USFK rate to compensate for handling a criminal case without charge to the defendant is — to my knowledge, which is about a year old — either W6,000,000 or US$6000. But most Korean criminal defense attorneys on the open market charge an initial fee of not less than W10,000,000 plus a success fee of at least W10,000,000 for acquittal or non-detention (fees of 10+20, or 20+20, are not uncommon). Serious “heavy-hitter” former judges or prosecutors — the people who might be able to make charges “go away” based on their connections — can charge much more.
Whether that means the USFK lawyers are “second-rate” is open to debate. But it does mean that the lawyer is not being paid enough to care all that much about the case, and certainly has no monetary incentive win or lose. It’s not all about the money, for sure, but money does help — especially since these types of cases usually involve a 3:00 a.m. phone call summoning the lawyer to Godforsaken places like Pyeongtaek or Uijeongbu. Since the supply of English-speaking lawyers is so small, and those with the language skills and comparative experience necessary to serve some jackass Army Specialist smacking a cab driver over the head with a beer bottle can also command rates of US$550 per hour serving foreign investors, one has to ask whether the USFK rate attracts the people best suited to help soldiers in need.
And I’m well aware of the practice of locking themselves up in a hermitage, whether it be a goshiwon or a Buddhist temple, for years in preparation for the bar exam. It seems to have worked for President Roh in the sense that he didn’t attend university and still managed to pass the bar exam.
If I can pile on with my experince.
I agree they Korean vs. Foreign laywers are diffrent beasts. So much so I am somewhat ambivlant about the complaints from foreign laywers about the new changes in the legal reform law. The big fight? About the use of the term “lawyer”, even with qualifications (e.g. “Foreign Lawyer”).
One thing that has always amused/amazed me is how disconnected from real world Korean Lawyers seem from the environment they practice in. This leads I think to a rather profound irony. In a country where everyone takes such a dim view of contractual agreements and will expound upon their flexiblity, Korean lawyers seem to have a rather inexplicable rigidity in what the Law allows.
Likewise I do not know if it is normal Korean rigidity to foreigner’s thoughts in general or simply the aforementioned elietism of the club, but to a man I find that Korean lawyers hate, absoulty hate, the idea that a foreign lawyer can understand, argue, and reason with Korean law.
Without blowing my own horn, and without getting to into the business of my firm, I quick ancedote on that. It was a normal day working for the Korean govrenment one morning when I came in. The first thing plopped on my desk was a paper that I was told to “edit”. Apprently one of the attorney’s working for the govrenment thought I was there to edit some english paper he wrote for something on Korean Trademark Law. I read about three paragraphs into it and found his reading was all wrong (reading things into the law that are not there, and even misunderstanding some basic facts).
So I wrote off a note via the messenger system discussing the problem as basicaly a horrible english error on his part, and if he could rewrite or outline the paper I would be in a better position to edit it. This got me a huffy offical/author at my desk wonder how I could say he was wrong. Patiently I pointed out the reltive citations, my intial mistake was using the English translation of the law from the Korean Intellectual Property Office. I was lecutred a bit on how the translation is not authortive, and I should trust him since he his a Korean Lawyer after all and I am not.
So I did the next reasonable thing, I got out the Korean Text, pointed to same Articles and asked him to show me the language he says was there. I then got a huffy lecture on how not everything in Korean Law is printed in the law(which was even more funny since the whole paper was arguing for a literal interpretion of Korean Law). Added to this nonsense I got the fall back position that he was a lawyer and he knew more than me.
To make a long story short I simply told him I had at that point four years in working with Korean Intellectual Proprty Law and he had only two years as a lawyer and even less in that specific feild. That comblined with the actual text lead me to the conclusion that he should rewrite the paper in a way that makes sense if I he wanted me to edit it.
That was about 9 months ago, I never heard from him since other being on the reciving end of some of his boneheaded prouncements.
I used to know one of the lawyers who passed the Korean bar exam when people who did numbered in the single digits. He was most certainly a very bright man. He insisted on keeping his occupation a secret while he attended my class. He just wanted to be able to shoot the breeze in English with the rest of the class over such heady topics as popular music, food, and movies.
The fewer lawyers the better. We should have this kind of bar exam in the USA. And keep it in Korean too.
You guys make jurisprudence sound interesting
Mr. Carr, just to play devil’s advocate, if they covered Dokdo what possible legal justification could Korea have to claim it, except maybe “possession is nine-tenths of the law”?
That suggests “injustice.” I understand that it may be the reality of things, but it is a sad reality that should be rooted out. Of course, that assumes that the charges are not bogus.
Dram Man: The idea of you editing anything scares me.
And yes, the “official” English translations of Korean laws are shite. He who copies and pastes such drivel is lazy indeed.
excellent, Thank you, Mr. Carr and Mr. Lee.
Man, one of best posts and threads I ever read. Thank you Brendon and leefr.
Man, one of best post and thread I ever read. Thank you Brendon and leefr.
A piece on the Korean Bar Exam won’t be complete without the Judicial Research and Training Institute(JRTI). For those who have passed the bar, they then have to attend a training course at the JRTI.
Here, through further tests, they get classified into three levels, the top level being those who are “qualified” to be judges, the second level, prosecutors, and the third and final level, lawyers.
The numbers for the judges and prosecutors are very small, so all of the trainees do whatever they can to get on top, even if it means sacrificing their classmates, because they all know being the judge or prosecutor is the only way they can succeed, while being a lawyer means hitting a dead end, financially and socially.
For those who have made the top two levels, comes the satisfaction that they have beaten the odds, which leads to a great sense of snottiness, the ones at the third level, the agony that comes from trying to figure out how to make a living.
Now you may ask, why would lawyers worry about something like that? Well to put it simply, major Korean law firms do not hire a lawyer fresh from JRTI. Instead they go for former prosecutors and judges, not because of experience and legal skills, but because they know certain people, who can influence the outcome of a legal case. So the only thing the above lawyers can do is set up a office and hope someone will show up and/or become ambulance chasers.
That’s why you have judges and prosecutors going at each other and prosecutors demanding respect from a certain non-Korean overseas fund, among others. And lawyers who are well not that capable.
Brendon –
Thanks for sending me the e-mail to alert me to this most interesting conversation. I suspect you probably want me to repeat some of the things we discussed a few months back at the Westin Chosun, so here goes.
Many American companies and lawyers have more trouble working with Korean lawyers than lawyers anywhere else in the world. American lawyers are trained to think like lawyers and that is what their clients expect. Korean lawyers are, for the most part, trained to think like kings and American lawyers quickly resent it. Korean lawyers tend to view their American clients as distractions and rarely keep them well informed. American clients resent this too. Korean lawyers oftentimes seem more interested in maintaining their relationships with opposing counsel and judges than in vigorously representing their foreign clients. American clients feel this and resent this too.
An American lawyer like Brendon Carr is invaluable because he understands both sides of the equation, and very few Korean lawers do. I have handled hundreds of legal matters in Korea over the last 15 years in tandem with Korean law firms, and yet I can count on my fingers the number of Korean lawyers with whom I can work and ALL of these lawyers have law degrees from the United States or England in addition to their Korean degrees.
The influx of new Korean lawyers will increase competition and bring on many more young lawyers. All of this will be a good thing.
However, until Korea’s methods of educating its lawyers changes, their ability to handle the needs of foreign clients will remain limited.
Korea keeps out foreign lawyers (much more so than China, Vietnam, and even Japan) and I have always thought it is because deep down most of its lawyers know they are not up for the competition.
There, I said it.
Let’s vote on whether or not Brendon is handsome.
Lao-Ocean-Girl says yes.
I’ve seen Brendon’s photo online, and HIS PHOTO is handsome … but you know how they touch-up photos these days, so who knows if it’s even Brendon. But count me for a yes.
Others’ views?
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
From what Mr. Carr, Mr. Lee and now Chinalawblog have said, with the arcane, impractical learning and sense of entitlement for simply having absorbed it, Korean lawyers are the last of the yangban. No wonder they want to preserve their fiefdom–they’re an endangered species.
A very informative and interesting discussion; thanks Mr. Carr & Mr. Leefr.
Does legal precedence exist? In the mid 90s a friend was a defendant in a paternity case that just wouldn’t end. Though the blood test proved that he couldn’t be the father, the case wasn’t dismissed, and it wound its way through the system. As this wasn’t Korea’s first ever paternity case legal precedence would have already been established, yet it had little, if any, relevance. Ultimately the case appeared before the Supreme Court, as the plaintiff had an “automatic appeal” to both earlier rulings against her. Once again she met defeat.
From a layman’s perspective this seems to be inefficient, as the Appellate and Supreme Courts shouldn’t be troubled by cases where legal precedence has been established, provided such rulings conform to the constitution. I’d like to know how the Korean legal process works, and in what ways it is more and less effective & efficient than the US.
Thanks.
Thanks to Dan Harris of Harris & Moure (and China Law Blog) for joining in.
There is a lot of talent here in Korea — and the dazzling emergence of commenter “leefr” shows us that the typical experience with Korean lawyers is not the only experience possible. But that jam is spread pretty thin on the toast. In this regard, the foreign lawyer serves as a supplemental spot of jam enabling more of the toast to get covered.
Geez… And here I was, half considering employment as a ‘foreign legal consultant’ in South Korea as a possible after-law school option for employment. Talk about discouraging.
But at any rate, thanks for the good bit of knowledge that’s been disseminated here. It does help me to understand why, when I asked one of my classmates (from South Korea) whether she was planning on practicing law in South Korea after graduation, she just laughed and said ‘no way’.
Zonath’s comment on his Korean classmate [at an American law school]’s reaction to the prospect of working in Korea after graduation raises another issue: Part of the Korean bar’s discomfort with “market opening” is based on the unfairness of allowing fellow Koreans an alternate entry/re-entry to the legal profession after qualifying as a lawyer or solicitor somewhere else. Few Korean lawyers are threatened by Uncle B, but the prospect of either “Koreatown Mike” or Chulsoo the yuhaksaeng calling themselves “lawyer” after US law school (Mike’s case) or, worse yet, some patty-cake nine-month LL.M./state bar exam combo (Chulsoo’s case) has them quite exercised. Koreatown Mike has a funny accent and can barely read, and if that damn Chulsoo was worth a crap he would have passed the Korean bar examination. Allowing them access means that all that study — grueling years of high school to gain entrance to SNU, followed by five years in the goshiwon jail cell, then two years getting hazed at JRTI — and forced virginity through age 30, were for naught!
These Korean lawyers, who are almost exclusively so-called “high street” lawyers handling civil litigation and criminal-defense matters, or non English-speaking attorneys at larger Korean firms, have a hard time imagining that there is anything else that a “lawyer” would or, indeed, should do for a client. As I’ve mentioned earlier, there is very little domestic demand for non-litigation legal services. And so, in their mind’s eye, when the prospect of market opening is raised, they do not think of prospective referral sources being gained by the arrival of these legal/business advisors, but rather they imagine “unworthy” ethnic-Korean ersatz lawyers taking away their hard-earned monopoly rights to appear before the court.
When I say that Brendon Carr hasn’t had much of a bad time with Korean lawyers, that doesn’t mean that all foreign-qualified lawyers are welcome here. Foreigner lawyers are tolerated more or less benignly, but ethnic-Koreans — especially “real” Koreans who went abroad to qualify as a lawyer — have a much harder time. The yuhaksaeng lawyer, in particular, is under constant attack. If I were Zonath’s friend, I wouldn’t relish that welcome either.
All true, yet there are many such individuals at local firms. In fact, there are some large firms where all the foreign legal consultants are ethnic Koreans. Often there is no other choice.
That said, I think the individuals you describe find a much warmer welcome working as in-house counsel in Korea where there are, of course, no Korean-licensed lawyers to get bent out of shape by their presence.
Wow, there are smart Koreans around that I did not know existed. Maybe all the foreign degrees will have an ultimate impact on the present Korean world-view. I always laughed when the finance boys at Gwang Hwang Mun talk about becoming a global financial hub because without lawyers [compliance officers] creating and supervising contracts and enforcing coporate behavior through litigation; no company in their right minds are going to set up serious operations in K land. Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo are all great examples of finacial hubs who utilize American law firms with regularity. Yet some might think that finance has nothing to do with law and everthing to do with the bottom line. Yes and no. For example, a while back the K-dorks at the ministry of finance started to muscle the foreign investment firms to relocate their regional servers in Korea. Needless to say this idea was not very appealing. Only the threat of nearly every firm to pull of Korea made the stupid gerbils eat humble pie and wisely it turns out with the ongoing Lonestar stupidity. Firms will only invest money in proportion to how much they think they can make money. Without lawyers to protect corporate dough, fend off regulators, and influence policy, there is not a chance in hell Korea is ever going to be nothing more than what it is now for the next twenty years.
First off, I’d like to thank all of you who found my post informative. And this thread has really taken off for a law-related post! Probably reflecting the frustration a lot of foreigners feel with the legal system here in Korea.
Some disclaimers, however, are necessary. I completed my two years of training at JRTI about two years ago. I am not, however, engaged in private practice in the present, and I cannot claim any direct experience in litigation or in serving as counsel to foreign clients in tandem with foreign counsel. I will defer to those posters, such as Mr. Carr, who have such experience and any comments I make on those matters will be based on indirect experience, hearsay, guesswork etc.
In answer to seouldout’s question :
The Korean court system does not officially recognize the legal principle of stare decisis, which you seem to be referring to as ‘precedent’. (Precedent merely signifies a previous judgement on substantially the same issue; stare decisis means that lower courts are bound to apply the decisions reached by superior courts on legal issues.) The official application of stare decisis by itself does not make a whole lot of difference — courts all over the world defer to decisions made by their supreme courts, while jurisdictions recognizing stare decisis will overturn precedent when this is deemed necessary. In Korea the existence of a favorable precedent by the Supreme Court is still the strongest legal argument a lawyer can make. That your friend’s case was not dismissed straight off is due more to fundamental differences in civil procedure between Korea and the US than to stare decisis. (Without going too deep into it, the concept of dismissal/summary judgement vs. trial judgement does not have its equivalent in the Korean system. Dismissal only occurs when matters subject to preliminary objection, such as standing or justiciability, are not satisfied. Otherwise, the court will always make a decision on the merits with no distinction as to summary/trial.)
The fact that your friend’s case made it all the way to the Supreme Court is a much more serious problem confronting Korea’s justice system. Korea’s Supreme Court does not have the power to grant or deny certiorari as does the US Supreme Court. (Certiorari means that the Supreme Court can screen the cases that come before it and will only pass judgement on cases that it deems are worthy of its attention — generally cases involving contentious legal issues that the lower appellate courts have a hard time agreeing on.) The resources of the Supreme Court of any jurisdiction are a precious thing, but as it now stands the Supreme Court is forced to consider and pass judgement upon every case that comes before it, and this results in an unbelievable caseload upon its judges. The quality of its judgements and the authority of its rulings suffer as a result. A brief attempt was made formerly (I believe sometime in the late 80s to early 90s but don’t quote me on this) to screen appeals made to the Supreme Court, but this proved politically explosive and was soon abandoned.
Such a restriction would be within constitutional limits — the Korean constitution guarantees a right of appeal, but does not provide that every case must receive consideration three times (lower - appellate - supreme) nor does it guarantee consideration by the Supreme Court. What proved to be the problem, however, was (euphemistically speaking) the egalitarian ethos pervading Korean society, in the sense of: Why on earth is that guy’s case considered while mine isn’t? What the average Korean on the street does not grasp is that the Supreme Court is not there to reconsider the facts of his case in order to redress his sense of wrong; it is (or should be) there in order to provide stability and unity to the jurisprudence of the Korean courts. In my view, this is one battle Chief Justice Lee has to fight head-on in the court of public opinion in order to ensure the long-term relevance of the Supreme Court. Instead, he has long since expended all his political capital on meaningless spats with the prosecutor’s office.
And while I expounded at length on the monstrosity of the gosi in my previous post, I feel obliged to point out that it was also considered an ‘equalizer’ for bright and motivated but underprivileged people who could not hope to transcend their social status by ordinary means. And Koreans are suckers for equality. Someone already mentioned the current president — his personal merits aside, one look at his background and the fact that he eventually became president will suggest the kind of social-ladder-hopping power conferred by passing the exam. (OK OK, maybe that wasn’t such a good example after all.) This ties in to the proposed introduction of ‘law schools’ in Korea, as one argument against it is that unless an effective system of scholarships and loans is executed simultaneously, the underprivileged will increasingly be denied the opportunity to enter the legal profession.
leefr> Great post, however I disagree with some elements based on my narrow experince. Patent Court to me seems to be more about rubber stamping KIPO and passing the buck to the Supreme Court regardless of previous decisions. (On second thought it could be more of a personal axe to grind.)
While I think your referrence to “egaltiariasm” being a reason for an appeal before the Supreme Court is spot on, I wonder how much of that is a byproduct of the precived (or actual judging from recent headlines) corruption in the justice system.
All of this reminds me of some of the conversation I have had over here with Korean Lawyers who do not get out much. I wonder when their eyes get wider, saying that in the US most patent infringement cases are handled by jury or that in the US many local judges are elected.
leefr’s observation that:
is, in my experience, correct. It’s also important to emphasize the manner in which the procedural inanities of the Korean legal system - particularly the unfettered right of appeal that leefr mentions - undercut the effectiveness of any KSC decision in streamlining the judicial process. Inefficiency - justice delayed is justice denied - is also promoted by the fact that litigants are free on appeal to introduce both entirely new legal arguments and wholly new factual allegations, instead of being limited to raising points of law to challenge a lower court’s ruling (as generally is the case in both mature common law and civil law jurisdictions. This seems to be frowned on in KSC practice, but (I am advised) will not necessarily result in the perfunctory dismissal of a case within three months (that I am advised is the almost functional equivalent of a denial of certiori in US SC practice. In the appellate court, though, it is the source of untold mischief, since it effectively means that a case may be entirely relitigated.
The inoperability of anything like the doctrine of stare decisis in Korean jurisprudence has its roots in the immaturity of Korea’s version of a civil law system, and is very closely connected with the grotesque inadequacy of Korean law as a guide and shaper of commercial practice (compared with the Anglo-American common law approach, even as it is applied in places like HK, Singapore and even Malaysia.
Re: the capacity of Korean lawyers to work with foreign clients/counsel -
As I said, I will defer to the experience of Mr. Harris(chinalawblog) and Mr. Carr as to how well Korean lawyers stack up against foreign lawyers.
To play the part of apologist, however, it is not really fair for the foreigner to just go up to the individual Korean lawyer and say, “You suck”. They are first and foremost ‘Korean’ lawyers trained to operate in the Korean legal system with its almost exclusive focus on domestic litigation. This in itself is not a bad thing, as I would regard the ability to navigate the civil and criminal courts of his/her domestic jurisdiction as a basic prerequisite for any attorney. What is alarming is that usually there is neither time nor motivation for the lawyer-in-training to focus on building up other skills.
Key among these is language. Language is the tool of the lawyer’s trade. He must not just be able to communicate, he must have such a commanding grasp of it as to be able to split hairs or be so persuasive as to change the opinions of those he argues with. For any of you who have worked as ESL or English hagwon teachers in Korea, I think you will have an idea of how difficult it is for the average Korean to carry on a passable conversation in English. How confident are you that you could train a native Korean to engage in an intelligent, nuanced discussion of a complicated legal case with a foreign client so that the client would feel assured of the competence of his lawyer? In any case, the adult students you have/had in your class are probably college students or office workers fully aware of the importance of English in gaining meaningful employment or promotion and properly motivated thereby. The gosi prepper and the JRTI trainee aren’t getting enough sleep as it is. By the time they finish training, the great majority of trainees have not had to study any English since high school.
Of course, on the flip side (and ignoring for the moment that English has taken over the world) I would think that few American or British lawyers kept on with study of a foreign language beyond a smattering of French or Spanish in high school, let alone developed an ability to provide legal services in that language. They too are American and British lawyers first and foremost.
Mr. Harris’ main criticism of Korean lawyers, however, does not concern their English skills, but rather their attitude towards their clients. One reason I might suggest for this is the Korean lawyer’s basic lack of perspective and understanding as to what the foreign client wants and what the Korean lawyer has found to be effective in his dealings with domestic clients. A perverse side-effect of Korean society’s strictly hierarchical structure is that in dealings between strangers, courtesy and consideration can be misconstrued as weakness, and therefore inferiority that can be exploited. The attorney-client relationship is a two-way street, and if you think you’ve seen boneheaded Korean lawyers, you should see some of the clients they have to deal with. This means that adopting a patronizing stance can actually make it easier for a Korean lawyer to work with his clients. In providing services to a foreign client, however, none of these social conventions apply, and I think I can safely say that to a native Korean lawyer, the mind of the foreigner is totally alien territory. To have even a vague idea of the wants and needs of the foreign client and shift gears accordingly requires a degree of experience and interaction that they simply don’t have. I think this is a point of frustration that foreigners have not just with Korean lawyers, but Koreans in general.
And regarding Mr. Harris’ comment that Korean lawyers feel deep down inside that they are not up for competition with foreign lawyers - sadly, I think that statement, which presumes an objective appraisal by Korean lawyers of their own abilities and the abilities of their foreign colleagues, might actually be an overestimation of the situation. A more accurate statement would be that they feel they SHOULDN’T HAVE TO compete. Such is the profession’s sense of entitlement that they’re moaning and whining enough about having 1,000 new lawyers come out each year. Most of them don’t have any point of reference at all as to how they would fare against foreign lawyers, and merely feel outraged that they may be forced to compete AGAIN after all they have gone through to get to this point.
Despite the accuracy of leefr’s immediately preceding comments, I must concur with those who say that by and large Korean lawyers cannot compete with Anglo-American or European trained commercial lawyer/counsellors in providing legal advice regarding commercial transactions and that they know it. This debility stems from the nature and underdevelopment of what passes for commercial law in Korea, the underlying shallowness and simplicity of the traditions of commercial customs and uses in Korea compared to those of the West and the concomitant naivete, not to say ignorance, on the part of Koreans generally and Korean lawyers most glaringly with those Western customs and uses and their contemporary elaborations that, for better or worse,now constitute the international commercial standard. Given the deeply mercantilist stance of the Korea state, and Korean lawyers’ role as one of the most important cadre within that state’s mandrinate, it’s hardly surprising therefore that they are decidedly protectionist and dedicated to trying to control the revenue to be had from foreign businessmen doing business in Korea by prohibiting foreign lawyers from operating here, even outside the bar of the domestic courts as “mere” commercial advisors, except as “cigar store white men” for Korean firms.
One more thing. I am always touting my abilities to predict how a Korean court will rule on any particular case. I am actually better at predicting how Korean courts will rule than any court anywhere else in the world, including the United States, England, and China. Once I discovered how Korean courts rule, I am almost never wrong. I just ask one question: what would be best for Korea? The answer then becomes whatever will delay the case, which means the ruling is usually in favor of the case continuing and Korean lawyers continuing to get bad. Then there are the cases like the recent Starbucks-Starpreya case, which came as absolutely no surprise to me because of course a Korean court will favor the Korean company over the foreign company.
One of the things I try to do when I am representing a foreign company with a case in Korea against a Korean company is to try to get a Korean company to join my client’s side in the case. This judicial nationalism in Korea is (IMHO) worse than anywhere else in the world (yes, including China).
Brendon thanks for the reply. I just ask about USFK lawyers because the lawyers I have had to deal with for GI related incidents had limited English language skills which made it hard for the soldiers to fully explain their case. During court the lawyers just appeared to be there to keep the conveyor belt going of sending GI’s to jail and not arguing for their client’s innocence.
To this day I still don’t know of any case of any USFK personnel being found innocent in a Korean court.
A couple things…
1. As far as the whole “foreign competition” angle most of it boils down to semantics and in a way liability, it is not like one who passed the bar in East New Bumfuck-shire is going to be able to practice Korean law as Korean Lawyers do. To me this makes the objections somewhat inexplicable.
Then again a lot of the practice Korean law is based on finding compromise, not true resolution between adversaries. If almost anybody is authorized to find a compromise, a good part of the business could be lost.
2. Mr. Harris, I really have to take exception to your comments the Starbucks v. Starpreya ruling. I could argue just the opposite about the “Korea benefits” standard you propose. The original suit was actually brought by Shinsaegae, one of the largest retailers in Korea and the other half of Starbucks JV in Korea. (Recent comments by SBUX’s CEO indicate a bit of a rift I think however on this issue specifically)
Anyway the main reason the ruling was not surprising to me is two things. First Korean law has a very literal and strict outlook on how they see English word marks, especially in coined marks such as “Starbucks” and “Starpreya”. Under such a literal outlook the “Star” portion of the mark pretty much does not exist (”Star” could be seen as indicating “best” and therefore its descriptive, unlike other jurisdictions which would see use as mearly suggestive), therefore according to Korean practice the to marks in question are “bucks” and “preya”.
Second part is the logo as I recall, and again no surprise for me. Korean courts do a terrible job at figurative marks (and the Korean Intellectual Property Office not much better). Part of the reason for this is the absurdity of the current system. Guidelines to determine similarity are set by the Korean Intellectual Property Office. KIPO in turn is under the courts, since their administrative rulings on similarity are subject to an appeals procedure to the Patent Court. This creates a situation where the court does not feel bound to follow KIPO’s guidelines. Further adding to insanity of it all, more times than not KIPO is actually a appellee in the case, making the guidelines determining similarity themselves the crux of the issue.
To get back to the central allegation I have seen this problem pop-up no matter who the parties are. I think Starbucks got a fair shake from the system. Accordingly, this is one of those cases where I am unsure what is more disturbing, the actual ruling or that such is considered “fair” under the Korean system.
This is certainly a fascinating thread, and one which demonstrates the well-developed interests that some here have for a wide range of Korea-related topics. Thanks both to Brendon for initiating this discussion, and to all others who have generously added their knowledge about and experiences with this interesting subject.
One of the best posts I’ve seen in years, and this site produces quite a few. Especially enjoyed the input from leefr, Dan Harris, Sperwer, Dram man, and Zonath. I was a lawyer by accident. The Watergate hearings were on, I still had two years of GI bill left, and there were powerfully articulate men on both sides of that brouhaha who gained my admiration. My first bar exam was three days of essay written in Spanish, in a jurisdiction where an 8 percent pass rate was not unusual. Failed it by a quarter of a point, which was better than many native speakers. Went up to the Socialist Republic of Massachusetts where, after a bar review course, I could not believe how easy the day and a half Mass. Bar was. One day of multiple choice, one half day of essay! After six months with the Welfare Department as a bilingual AFDC case worker, I went into private practice. A year slogging in the Lawrence District court cured me. I met some really great and dedicated attorneys, both young and old, but I also met enough who belonged in a Petrie dish with the rest of the slime. (Ironically, our most briliant lawyer, an LL.D. who ended up getting disbarred, was not one of the latter.) When I got the chance to return to the Army and jump out of airplanes for a living, I left and never looked back. For those still serving interested in the law, government, or business, I recommend considering a law degree. The education gained will serve you in good stead in many fields. Some of my classmates moved on to careers in journalism, business, medicine, government, and foreign relations. And some of those who stayed with the law have distinguished themselves as both attorneys and humanitarians. The study of law: It’s not just for lawyers, as the interest in this post attests.
Amen, brother. You and I are in 100% agreement on this issue. It is not correct to criticize the Korean lawyer for being adapted to his marketplace — a Korean lawyer who behaved as an American lawyer would be of little appeal to Korean clients.
On the Starbucks issue, one has to wonder — not having access to the record, it may always be a mystery — if Shinsegae’s attorneys at KCL noted the existence and prominence of the name “Starbuck” in English literature. (Not just Moby Dick, but Battlestar Galactica too!) The reported contortions of the court in justifying how the wordmark “Starbucks” should be viewed as “Star” + “Bucks” overlooks the existence of the name Starbuck.
This looks like as good a place as any for quoting something that my friend and Chinese scholar E. Bruce Brooks posted on a listserve that I belong to, for it concerns the Chinese-Confucian view of law — perhaps analogous to the Roman view of law that has influenced much Continental law, including German law, which in turn has influenced Japanese law and thereby Korean law — and thus might serve to clarify some issues (or maybe not):
“American majority political theory tends to envision considerable order initiative from the citizens themselves. The regulations are a way for them
to get what they want, not, or not entirely, a thing they submit to in order
to produce what somebody else wants. We put up signs (of course not in Massachusetts, but it is well known that Massachusetts is not part of America, or of anything else either) to help people find their way, not to compel them to go somewhere in particular. The dominant 03c Chinese political theory sense of it is that public order is not so much assisted as imposed. There are spontaneity theories within that general situation, not only in Mencius but here and there in Sywndz also (and it would be a virtue on somebody’s part to map them for the rest of us), but the context, the default presumption, is top down.”
Korean lawyers operate within a top-down system of Confucian-Roman legal assumptions about imposing order on society. Koreans, feeling the imposition and being by longstanding culture somewhat anarchic, attempt to evade the law whenever possible. The default mode in the Korean legal system is rule by law rather than rule of law, with imposed order rather than assisted order (or even justice) being the aim. Thus the law is used in what looks like arbitrary ways but always for the purpose of maintaining the imposed, hierarchical order.
Korean lawyers represent this imposed order and are thus supremely imposing.
But what do I know about law. I’m just guessing and speculating based on secondhand information in an effort to contribute more than merely a yea vote on the question of Brendon’s putative good looks.
So … have at it.
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
Brendan> One of the more difficult (if not useless) strategies used in Korea is fame outside of the country. Both KIPO and the courts, despite treaty commitments under WTO’s TRIPS and others, consider “fame” to be only in Korea. I once represented a client that was the top world wide in its field for the past 20 years, the courts could have cared less.
So even if references were made the use of the word as one, I venture they would not have been persuasive since they are mostly, if not all, considered outside Korea. The logic from their goes that an average Korean consumer therefore would consider Starbucks two distinct words.
Last thought, even if such evidence was properly considered by the court, it may have actually weakened the case. The logic being that such usage makes the argument about the uniqueness of the mark less unique.
(Somebody remind me, was it Battlestar Galactica that had those “U” shaped lazer pistols that shot two beams out each end of the “U”?)
The legal system has also traditionally acted as public censor in Korea, and this is clearly what happened in the Busan 9 case too.
Oh criminy — “the legal system” has not acted at all in the so-called Busan 9 case. Some English teachers put on a public “comedy” performance, an activity outside the scope of their visas, and may get those visas cancelled as a result. It’s not the Orwellian nightmare you people are trying to trump up. They’ve been detained briefly for questioning to determine the facts; they’ve not been charged with any crime (indicted) nor have they been tried for anything (convicted). There may be administrative action on the visa matter. Get over yourselves.
The English teachers who appeared in “The Host” as evil American soldiers — something which can hardly be said to offend the “public censor” since that caricature is the official government stance these days — they too were deported. Were their so-called rights also trampled?
(By the way, there is another thread here on the Marmot’s Hole alllllll about this topic — 265 comments and counting. Go there. Post nothing further here about the Busan 9, lest I delete it immediately.)
Finally, this thread gets off track!
Ask and ye shall receive — it was not Battlestar Galactica you’re remembering, but Disney’s The Black Hole. The Sentry Robots on Maximilian Schell’s scary ghost ship Cygnus carried these two-laser pistols. (Incidentally, the craptacular OCN/SuperAction staple Event Horizon is the exact same movie remade with buckets of blood.)
You could buy a Sentry Robot gun replica on eBay (of course), but it looks like you missed the auction.
This has been a really interesting thread because it sheds some light on aspects of Korean society that I was a bit murky on–the posts by Leefr are just excellent.
And “Event Horizon” is one of the suckiest movies ever.
As long as the thread creator endorses going off-topic… I think EVENT HORIZON is extremely underrated (at least the first half). There have been precious few science fiction movies that concerned themselves with real-world physics as much as EH tried to do (in the first half). Same Art Director (Tony Reading) as 2001: SPACE ODYSSEY.
Too bad the film turned into gore-silliness in the second half, though.
As for guns, don’t forget the odd blasters used of OTHERWORLD. Their barrels were *under* the hand. … Don’t remember if there were any lawyers on OTHERWORLD, though (in a sad attempt to make my comments a little less off-topic).
Haisan, the set of “Event Horizon” was interesting, they just ran out of steam with the plot after about 30 minutes (which I guess is what you’re saying).
I kind of liked the guns in “Minority Report” that they spun around to shoot, although I didn’t get why they had to spin them.
Oh yeah, and Korean lawyers blah blah blah
Spewer writes: “Korean lawyers cannot compete with Anglo-American or European trained commercial lawyer/counsellors in providing legal advice regarding commercial transactions and that they know it.” In support of this conclusion, Spewer references the underdevelopment of “what passes for commercial law in Korea.” I ask: what has one got to do with the other (even assuming the “other” is true)? To cut to the chase, Spewer commits “Ecological Fallacy” (or unit of analysis problem).
If I were Spewer, I would say something along the line that Carr had mentioned (which would support Spewer’s conclusion). That is, “just go up to the individual Korean lawyer and say, ‘You suck’,” because your membership is based of “rote memorization,” and not the ability to engage in creative interpretation of law and/or creatively applying facts to the law—with the premise being that law is a creative activity, as with all human endeavors. Or alternatively, I would say (if I were Spewer): the rules under which we play the game is Soccer, and not the American Football—and, by the way, Soccer is the global game/standard that applies to Korea.
That said, Carr sounds like a typical American attorney—which is a complement, given that I don’t know whether he has ever practiced law in the U.S. But strike that assessment.
As for Leefr, I am, as gbevers had noted, impressed (and not at all intending to be patronizing)—he must be enrolled in JD, not LLM, program, as Carr had described it, to be writing as he writes GIVEN that he claims to have passed the Korean Bar.
I disagree, DevilsAdvocate.
From what I have read in Korean newspapers over the years, Korea’s prosecutors and judges are probably some of the world’s best at “creative interpretation of law.”
Our associate is a member of Mr. Lee’s JRTI class. We’ve already done our detective work and confirmed our new friend Mr. Lee is the real deal — a Korean attorney admitted to the Korean bar, albeit one who appears to have been edumacated in the United States system during crucial years. His thought processes exhibited here make him appear to be strongly bicultural, which, depending on definition, could make him that “first foreigner” to pass the Korean bar examination. Word on the grapevine is that he’s a suitably modest and easy-to-get-along-with albeit brilliant young man.
As this young man is an example of what could be achieved by my little daughters, who could then open the Korean law firm “Carr & Carr”, I sincerely hope leefr gets around to coming over for a cup of coffee or bottle of rum.
Carr writes: “Koreatown Mike” or Chulsoo the yuhaksaeng calling themselves “lawyer.” Unless you know, you can’t possibly appreciate Carr’s description. If a Korea barred attorney was making such a comment, on the other hand, my response would have been very different and hostile for the reason that it takes a tremendous courage to be be “Koreatown Mike” in court, though not in his own office.
gbevers: What are you disagreeing?
Carr: you’ve confirmed what I had speculated.
“Koreatown Mike” is a natural ally of mine in Seoul, as although he’s an ethnic Korean with the right-looking facial features and greater conversational fluency in the spoken Korean language (maybe not better professional vocabulary, and frequently he doesn’t read all that well), Mike is an American through-and-through. When he comes to work in Korea, Mike endures all the same cultural shocks, difficulties, and disappointments as your Uncle B, but gets none of the benefits of being a foreigner. Instead he gets treated as either a mild retard or a traitor, whereas I can pick my teeth and put my feet up on the table (“Of course he doesn’t know our customs; Korea is a unique and impossible-to-understand land”) yet be treated as a celebrity if I can gasp out “Where is the bathroom?” in the Korean language. Poor Koreatown Mike is blamed for every faux pas.
Similarly, Chulsoo the yuhaksaeng American lawyer is a sympathetic figure in my view. These guys are the Koreans who jumped out of the well to take a look around, and bring back some of their observations. They’re essential staff at any Korean law firm, and yet the returned yuhaksaeng is often treated worse than a dog. At my former firm we hired one Chulsoo, and he was the key man in getting advisory work done. Now he’s in-house at Macquarie Bank and the word is, he’s their key man as well. It upsets me greatly that more of these fellows don’t find appropriate employment at Korean law firms.