Korean legal heavyweight Bae, Kim & Lee (BKL) recently appointed Ungjae Byun as the head of its Beijing office.
Byun’s addition will beef up BKL’s Beijing representative office, which is currently manned by Insoo Pyo, Jonggil Kim, Gihyoung Oh, Chi Yongquan and Daeshik Gwon.
Named Korean Firm of the Year in the 2011 ALB law awards, BKL boasts the largest presence among Korean law firms in China. It set up its Beijing office in 2004, and established its Shanghai presence in 2008 in a bid to capture rising deal flows and disputes in Sino-Korean trade. The Korean firm has collaborated with PRC peers such as King & Wood, Jingtian & Gongcheng, Jun He Law Offices and Tian Yuan Law Firm in many landmark cross-border Sino-Korean deals.
Byun’s specialties include foreign direct investment, corporate mergers and acquisitions, environmental law, financing, and assisting PRC companies to list in South Korea. Upon assuming this new post, Byun will split his time between his firm’s Seoul and Beijing offices.
Besides working with the firm, Byun also has various public roles—he is advisory commissioner on competition policies at the Korea Fair Trade Commission, and a legal advisor on international investment disputes at Korea’s Ministry of Justice.
Prior to joining BKL, Byun worked for another Korean firm, Kim & Chang, between 1998 and 2010. ALB
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