Litigation

Sometimes litigation may be the only course of action to protect your legal rights. We help our clients with a variety of business litigation matters, including breach of contract, intellectual property protection, trade secrets, employment, and business disputes, as well as an alternative dispute resolution, mediation, and arbitration.

From the inventor’s perspective to the grant of a patent, we provide clients with a full range of patent services worldwide, including patentability assessment, patent application preparation, and prosecution. We also offer consulting services in patent maintenance and avoidance of infringement.

We assist foreign clients with cross-border transactions and inbound investment to establish a business entity in Korea in compliance with all the legal requirements. We also provide a range of immigration services to meet our clients’ immigration needs, including a designation of corporate immigration programs and acquisition of the working or residential visas for our clients and their families.

We help our clients to protect their assets in Korea. To protect the assets from unexpected disputes, it is crucial to plan with legal and financial professions. Unexpected creditors are usually private parties in business transactions with our clients. Other creditors may be the governmental entities to enforce the local laws against our clients to impose unexpected fees, taxes, penalties, or sometimes all of them.

Regardless of our clients’ residency, we will help them protect their assets from creditors with a legal device, including the U.S. private trusts (e.g., inter vivos trust, living trust, and irrevocable trust).

We can collect delinquent taxes for foreign governments or their agencies from evasive taxpayers with undisclosed assets in Korea. We are familiar with various tax treaties and multilateral tax conventions among the OECD member countries. So, our tax professionals know how to formulate our clients’ rights as a tax collector to fit into the Korean legal system and successfully collect such debts without sacrificing their original rights under the Korean laws.

If necessary, we can negotiate a settlement to expedite the collection process. Otherwise, our forensic experts can trace the expatriate taxpayers’ property in Korea and obtain a court order to collect the delinquent tax by garnishment and other legal tools. Depending on the clients’ preference, we may work on a contingent fee to ensure that they do not incur any legal costs until we collect the debts.

We understand that foreign creditors often give up enforcing deficiency judgments because their debtors claim insolvency. In other cases, the foreign creditors may not have started the judicial proceedings in their countries because they cannot locate the expatriate debtors to serve the process in Korea.

Our forensic experts can help our clients trace expatriate debtors, any undisclosed assets, or both in Korea. Furthermore, we can even help, on request, our clients to serve the process in compliance with the international service convention. In such cases, we may also collect the relevant financial information of the debtors to help our clients obtain the deficiency judgment in their countries. Last, we can institute a local collection action for our clients against the debtors in Korea based on various legal processes recognized under the Korean judicial systems.

Amid the emerging financial opportunities created by blockchain technology, many investors worldwide have purchased Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies traded in Korea, one of the largest exchanges in the world. However, unlike stocks and other securities, cryptocurrencies are traded among investors without dependable government protections yet.

As a result, the investors must protect themselves from arbitrage, inside traders, unfaithful coin exchanges, unreliable order executions, irresponsible media, and unexpected changes in government policy.

Whether our clients are investors or developers of the cryptocurrency or blockchain technology, our patent-attorneys can help them protect their respective assets and ventures from unforeseeable financial and legal risks.

We understand unique and complex tax issues for expatriates and foreign taxpayers. Our tax professionals are specialized in tax conventions among different countries. In addition, we have hands-on expertis in the U.S. and Korean tax compliance requirements related to foreign assets as well as the tax amnesty programs. Alternatively, we can represent our clients before the tax authorities for a penalty abatement based on reasonable cause.

In particular, our tax professionals can help you comply with the following foreign U.S. tax issues:

• FBAR (Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts)
• FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act)
• PFIC (Passive foreign investment company)
• CFC (Controlled Foreign Corporation)
• Subpart F income
• SFCP (Streamlined Filing Compliance Procedures, including Streamlined Domestic Offshore Procedures and Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures)
• U.S. IRS Form W-8 series (e.g., Form W-8BEN, Form W-8BEN-E, and Form W-8IMY)

Whether our clients are on the audit or settlement stage, we can prepare, review, and amend their U.S. or Korean tax returns to legitimately prevent or mitigate their tax burdens. Also for those who plan to acquire or relinquish their citizenship or residency with the U.S. or Korea, our competent tax team can help them make an informed decision based on their potential tax consequences (e.g., U.S. Exit Tax).

Regardless of your tax position, we can help you optimize your tax solution at any stage from tax planning to audit defense.