hankyoreh

Kim Nam-il　

In the wake of the recent withdrawal of Board of Audit and Inspection chairman nominee Chung Dong-ki, a new “revolving door appointment” controversy is brewing over Park Han-chul, a nominee for Constitutional Court judge whose National Assembly nomination hearing is scheduled to begin Thursday. While the practice of public officials going to work at large law firms before returning to official positions has been described by some as “making use of expertise and experience,” other observers have voiced equal concern about “the co-opting of particular law firms by the administration.”

It was confirmed Tuesday that a total of 63 individuals whose immediately preceding job was as a judge, prosecutor, or public servant at a financial, tax, or government organization went to work in the past three years at Kim & Chang, the country’s biggest law firm. These individuals account for a full 29 percent of the 217 total employees who joined the firm during the same period. In particular, 19 of the 22 individuals who joined with the title of “adviser” during that time, rather than as attorneys, accountants, or tax accountants, had stepped down from working in high-level positions at institutions such as the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), the Fair Trade Commission (FTC), the Korea Communications Commission (KCC), and the National Tax Service (NTS).

According to details confirmed by the Hankyoreh through information posted to the official websites of Kim & Chang’s and the government offices in question, the law firm took on a total of 217 new employees between January 2008 and January 2011. Among the legal professionals in this group, the largest group consisted of 71 students from the 34th through 39th classes of the Judicial Research & Training Institute, along with nineteen former judges, eleven former prosecutors like Park, and sixteen attorneys, including former judges and prosecutors.

Among the attorneys was Kim Hoe-sun, who was the first person appointed as second domestic vice director of the National Intelligence Service during the Lee Myung-bak administration. A former prosecutor, Kim went to work at Kim & Chang in 2005 after serving in the chief prosecutor-level position of Justice Ministry Planning & Coordination Bureau director. He was subsequently named NIS second vice director in March 2008 before returning to Kim & Chang in October of the next year, where he has since carried out duties in the area of corporate criminal law. In a typical example of President Lee’ s revolving door appointment, a former NIS second vice director who handled domestic intelligence is now handling corporate criminal law duties at a private law firm.

In particular, Kim & Chang took on a large number of advisers who were senior public officials in charge of duties related to the firm’s main clientele, namely major corporations. Minister of Strategy and Finance Yoon Jeung-hyun worked as an adviser for the firm in 2008 after stepping down as chairman of the FSS before taking on his current position in February 2010. Two general directors at the FTC went straight to Kim & Chang after stepping down, and a number of senior tax officials, including a judge at the Tax Tribunal in the Prime Minister’s Office and superintendent at the Korea Customs Service, became Kim & Chang employees. From the FSS, which carries a great deal of weight in finance and investment policy, five individuals, including two vice directors, joined the law firm. Last year, with the selection of general programming channels imminent, two senior officials, including the head of the KCC’s Broadcasting and Communications Convergence Policy Office, moved to Kim & Chang. At present, the firm has 32 advisers, but experts estimate that the number would be much greater if the “adviser-level attorneys” effectively handling advisory duties are included.

As an example of the role served by these advisers, Lee Jae-hoon, who withdrew from consideration as a Minister of Knowledge Economy nominee in August 2010, earned some 490 million Won ($437,823) over a 15-month period while serving as a Kim & Chang adviser after first leaving the MKE. During this time, he took on advisory duties in one of the firm‘s cases involving a penalty assessed against an oil refinery. He ultimately bowed out as a nominee for MKE minister after his previous service as second vice minister of the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy, which oversaw energy policy, became a talked-about scandal.

“It does not make sense for legal experts to be requesting advice from non-jurists,” said an official with the prosecutors. “Ultimately, they are asking them to take the role of asking about or resolving cases.”

Conversely, there have also been cases where Kim & Chang employees have taken on positions that allow them to influence government policy or legislation. During the same period of time, attorneys and advisers affiliated with Kim & Chang were appointed or commissioned to positions such as member of the KCC’s Special Committee on Regulatory Reform and Legislative Advancement, member of the Korea Communications Standards Commission, member of the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs Investment Advisory Committee, Judicial Affairs secretary for the Cheong Wa Dae’s Office of the Senior Secretary for Civil Affairs, counsel for the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, and member of the expert advisory committee for the South Korea-European Union Free Trade Agreement.

Democratic Party members of the National Assembly’s Legislation & Judiciary Committee issued a statement Sunday in which they said, “Retired public officials are making use of the connections and information gained in their official positions to serve as lobbyists at law firms, and it is a matter of question whether they will be free from the law firm’s influence after they have returned to official positions.”

In response to this, an attorney with Kim & Chang said, “Accounting and tax corporations also have so-called advisers. It is unfair to take issue only with law firms.”

The attorney added, “I do not know if it is proper to let their expertise and experience go to waste simply because they are former public officials.”

“Not just under this administration, but under the Roh Moo-hyun administration and others, many former law firm employees took on public official positions,” the attorney went on to say. “It is not appropriate to exclude them from official positions simply because they were at a law firm before.”

Some observers have been commenting on a “bubble” forming with Kim & Chang’s reputation.

An attorney with another top-ten law firms said, “There is a tendency to give Kim & Chang responsibilities that other law firms could do equally well. They say it allows for face-saving when they lose a case, since they can tell their superiors, ‘We lost even though we hired Kim & Chang.’”

The attorney added, “In large part, the Kim & Chang myth has been blown out of proportion by news outlets and politicians charging that Kim & Chang has been co-opted by the administration.”

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]