Yulchon LLC

Managing Partners: Seok Hoon Kang, Dong Ryul Choi, Hee Woong Yoon
Number of Fee Earners: 570+
Languages: Korean, English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Vietnamese, Burmese, Cambodian

Firm Overview:
Yulchon is a full-service international law firm headquartered in Seoul, Korea. It employs over 570 professionals, including more than 60 licensed in jurisdictions outside of Korea. The firm’s perspective is international and its reach is global. Yulchon advises on a full range of specialised practice areas, including Corporate and Finance, Antitrust/Competition, Tax, Real Estate and Construction, Dispute Resolution, IP & Technology, and Labour and Employment. In addition to its main office in Seoul, Yulchon maintains offices in Russia, China, Myanmar, Vietnam and Indonesia, and has 11 regional practice teams covering the world.

Main Areas of Practice: 

Corporate & Finance:
Specialising in sophisticated transactional work, Yulchon’s corporate and finance group focuses on business objectives of the clients and employs a cross-disciplinary team approach to address those objectives efficiently and effectively.
■ Advised Prudential Financial, Inc. in its sale of the Prudential Life Insurance of Korea, Ltd. to Korea’s KB Financial Group for $1.9 billion, one of the Korean market’s largest M&A deals of 2020
■ Advised a group of financial investors selling their equity stake in Woowa Brothers, the #1 platform in Korea’s rapidly-expanding food delivery business sector, to Germany-based Delivery Hero
Contact: Young Su Shin; Sung Wook Eun
Emails: [email protected]; [email protected]

Antitrust/Competition:
Antitrust experts serve multinational clients with simultaneous multi-jurisdictional antitrust investigations and issues that require close coordination among counsel from each jurisdiction. The team has been recognised worldwide for representing clients both local and abroad in various high-profile cases.
■ Represented Woowa Brothers, a Korean start-up online food delivery platform company, in its $4 billion acquisition by Germany’s Delivery Hero before the KFTC as the seller’s Korean merger control counsel.
■ Successfully defended Hanwha System in the KFTC’s unfair trade practices investigation, persuading it to close the investigation without any enforcement measures.
Contact: Sung Bom Park
Email: [email protected]

Tax:
Comprised of over 60 tax experts, Yulchon’s tax group retains an exclusive team that handles legal services on tax controversy matters for foreign enterprises investing in Korea and Korean enterprises investing overseas.
■ Tax advisory services in connection with IGIS Asset Management’s acquisition of an Amazon logistics center located in New Mexico through a real estate fund
■ Representation of a tax litigation against industry wide tax assessments relating to how to determine the education tax base of foreign currency evaluation gains and losses arising from fixed income derivatives on behalf of 12 foreign banks, including JP Morgan Chase
Contact: Dong Soo Kim
Email: [email protected]

Real Estate & Construction:
The real estate and construction group has experts in a wide variety of fields that can assist clients in every major sector of the real estate and construction industries. The group’s knowledge and systemic interdisciplinary approach enable Yulchon to develop innovative structures and creative solutions customised for the most complex and challenging real estate projects and disputes.
■ Successfully represented HYUNDAI E&C in its lawsuit against the Korea Rural Community Corporation(KRC)
■ Successfully represented global construction companies on an arbitration case against Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co., Ltd.
Contact: Ju Bong Park
Email: [email protected]

Dispute Resolution:
The dispute resolution group is made up of highly respected professionals who have considerable experience working in both the public and private sector. It takes on matters in an organic manner whereby attorneys work cooperatively and draw on the widespread specialist expertise within the firm.
■ Representing the Korea Exchange in a Civil Action Brought by the Shareholders of Gamma Nu Inc. Seeking Damages Against the KRX for the Exchange’s Decision to Delist Gamma Nu
■ Representing Shihan Investment Corp. in an Action for Damages Regarding Investment in Leveraged Crude Oil Futures ETN
Contact: Dong Ryul Choi ; Il Bong Moon
Email: [email protected]; [email protected]

IP & Technology:
The firm's IP & Technology provides a full range of legal and policy advice to clients in traditional technologies and emerging technologies (including AI, blockchain, big data, data privacy, fintech, e-commerce and digital healthcare, collectively “Technology”), energy, and environment (including ESG).
■ Yulchon successfully defended a patent relating to water purification technology owned by Chungho Nais in a patent invalidation proceeding filed by its competitor Coway from the KIPTAB all the way to the Korean Supreme Court (Patent Court, 2017Heo1342, June 18, 2021; Supreme Court, 2021Hu10633, Nov. 11, 2021).
■ Yulchon established and implemented a data governance framework for the healthcare and medical data collected and managed by GC Pharm, one of the leading pharmaceutical companies in Korea.
Contact: Jeong Yeol Choe; Doil Son
Email: [email protected]; [email protected]

Labour & Employment:
The labour and employment practice has served as advisor to major Korean companies on all aspects of employment-law. The team is able to offer comprehensive assistance with all aspects of individual and collective labour relationships, as well as representation in any disputes related thereto.
■ Successfully representing SK Hynix in litigation in which employees are seeking to characterize profit-sharing bonuses as “wages” which must be included in the base rate for statutory severance benefits and other entitlements.
■ Yulchon conducted several occupational health and safety compliance projects for various affiliates of Hanwha Group.
Contact: Sang Wook Cho
Email: [email protected]